


Eye of the Storm

by Altenprano



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Flintlocks & Fireballs (Podcast)
Genre: AU Where the Regret Never Sank and the Dreamfold adventure was just a wild detour, Canon Typical Violence, I know very few things about sailing ships so here goes nothing, I'm horrible at summaries forgive me, May Contain Hag Deals, everybody lives au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2020-01-05 06:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18360488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altenprano/pseuds/Altenprano
Summary: When a quiet night in port turns out to be anything but, Tris, a young sorcerer, finds herself in the company of a certain privateering trio.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is 100% self indulgent fanfiction set in the world of Calcinea, and featuring the fantastic creations of the Flintlocks & Fireballs cast. Aside from Tris and her various crewmembers, everything that follows is the creation of the F&F cast, and I do not claim any credit for it.

It was supposed to be a quiet night.

 _The Drake_ had just put into port earlier that evening, a bit worse for wear after a few months at sea and a few unfortunate encounters off of the Dragon Coast, and the moment the captain gave permission for shore leave, the crew made themselves scarce, no doubt glad to be ashore. Tris had gone with them, keeping to the back of the group as she usually did, with Shriek overhead. At various points, the crew split off, some heading to brothels, others to gambling dens, while those that remained found themselves in a tavern- this number included a few of the _Drake’s_ officers, as well as a small handful of the ordinary sailors, and Tris.

The tavern had been nice and quiet- quiet as a tavern could be at that hour, anyway- when they arrived, and Tris had no sooner settled herself in a vacant corner, than she heard a glass shatter followed by the familiar voice of James Hutchinson, the _Drake’s_ master gunner, rising above the comfortable murmur of the tavern.

“Regent grant me strength,” she muttered, abandoning the ale Amery had brought her to go settle whatever quarrel James had gotten himself into, before it escalated further.

She made her way to where James and two other sailors from the _Drake_ had congregated around a figure with a somewhat matted, white beard, and a hood obscuring any other features of note. At a quick glance, the figure was either a small child or a dwarf, neither of which would be good if word got back to the captain that one of her officers was causing a public disturbance.

Tris moved carefully through the crowd of patrons, doing what she could to avoid drawing too much attention to herself. With any luck, she would be able to smooth things over, but there was some doubt at the back of her mind that it would do any good. Still, there was no harm in trying.

“Is something the matter?” It was the best she could do to interrupt whatever disagreement was going on, and maybe give the bearded figure a chance to escape if they needed it.

“What’s it to you, if something is?”  James had turned his attention towards Tris, and the attention of his two companions followed. “It ain’t any of your business, what I do with my shore leave. Now piss off.”

Tris lifted her chin, determined to make use of what height she had, which wasn’t much compared to James. “I don’t think Flintcreek would be pleased to hear her officers were causing trouble in the taverns, because then it is her business.”

James’s lip curled into a snarl, and he took a step closer, almost toe to toe with Tris. He was a good head and a half taller than she, and he knew it. “If you don’t want a scene, Duchess,  you’ll go back to your drink or your books or whatever you were doing. Stay out of trouble.”

She couldn’t help but bristle, and her hand curled into a fist at her side. “Don’t call me that,” she said, aware of the sudden silence that had fallen over the tavern’s main room, and the pairs of eyes that had found her.

“Or you’ll do what? Make the wind blow real hard?” He laughed, which was echoed by his companions, one of which, Tris realized, had grabbed the hooded figure by the collar of their cloak, holding them in place.

“I could do much worse than that.” The familiar prickle of magic ran down her arm, collecting in her fingertips, where it waited impatiently for her direction. She held the magic ready, unsure what to do with it, given the current arrangement of things, and forced the thought from her mind.

She could feel the attention of the entire tavern come to rest on her and James, but nothing was going to change that at this point. “Go pick on someone your own size, Mr. Hutchinson, leave the kid alone”

“So you defend stowaways _and_ strays now?”

“Leave it alone, for the Regent’s sake.” The prickling of magic intensified, and Tris knew what it wanted, but she held it close. There were too many people around, too many people who would get hurt.

He gave her a mocking bow. “Of  course, Your Grace.”

A thin line of lightning flew unbidden from her hand, splitting in midair to strike both James and the sailor who held the hooded creature, lengthening and wrapping around them like a coil of rope. The prickle of magic became a slight burn down her arms before it receded, taking the lightning with it.

Tris was only partially aware of the shouts that followed; her attention was on James, as she waited for him to strike back. She watched the hooded figure retreat into the crowd of patrons, who were all watching her- it shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. They gave the pair a wide berth, and for that, Tris couldn’t help but be grateful.

James lunged for Tris, catching her across the side of her face before she could move out of the way. “Scared to get dirty, are we?”

The blow sent her stumbling back a few steps, her cheek stinging. She tried to collect herself, to let the pain subside enough to focus. She grit her teeth and reined in her magic, making sure it wouldn’t act with a mind of its own as it had just then, before striking back at him.

There was a larger gathering of patrons now, some of which had begun to cheer- who they were cheering for, Tris couldn’t tell. In all likelihood, it was for James, and not for her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the flash of coins changing hands, saw Amery not far away, but no sign of the hooded figure in the crowd.

As Tris looked away,  James hit her again, and a cheer went up. He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, pulling her close. “Not so tough now, are we, Duchess?”

There was the prickle of magic again, prickling, then burning, its way up her neck. It wanted to help, perhaps to protect her, but she forced it to go quiet. She tasted copper from the split in her lip, and the sting of injury soon followed the stir of magic.

“Let me go.”

“Or what?”

There was a sudden clap of thunder, and Tris felt James’ grip release, dropping her to the floor. Her ears were ringing, the jeers of the crowd receding to the back of her head. The breath she’d been holding released as she scrambled to her feet, barely steady enough to stand before she took a step back, half-aware of the burn of magic down her arms. Half-registering what had happened- the lightning,  James, and the crack of thunder- she turned to run for the door.

She felt someone grasp her by the elbow- Amery. The half-elf woman’s lips moved, but Tris couldn’t make out what she was saying. Tris pulled away, something about needing fresh air, and headed for the door.

Once outside, a familiar weight settled on her shoulder, and the tension in her chest eased somewhat as Shriek returned to her.

Tris took a breath, steadying herself and trying to push away the lingering magic- it’d done enough damage already, and the less she used it, the better for everyone. She could feel it burning under her skin, tracing a familiar pattern up her arms and around her neck, causing the small, loose curls at the nape of  her neck to curl even more tightly in on themselves. The ringing in her ears had begun to fade, but her heart continued to beat quickly, instinct telling her to move, before James got back on his feet and came after her.

The ringing in her ears had receded, enough that she could hear footsteps headed towards her. On her shoulder, Shriek shifted position, and spread her wings, letting out a warning cry to get Tris’s attention.

  



	2. Chapter 2

At Shriek’s warning, Tris’s  hand went to the pocket in her skirt where she kept her dagger, fingers curling around the hilt, but keeping it hidden, waiting. She wasn’t a fool, and was sure once he regained his footing, no doubt James would come for her- or maybe one of his friends had decided they wanted to settle the score themselves. 

“I don’t want a fight, James,” she said, giving her head a small shake.

“Neither do we.” The voice was...small- a child’s, definitely not the rough voices of James or his companions. “I wanted to say thank you. For helping me.”

“Of course.” Tris turned to face the child, ignoring the indignant click of Shriek’s beak at the sudden movement. She found herself face to face with three figures, one of them the hooded figure from earlier. “You’re...welcome.”

Beside the hooded figure, there was a drow woman, white hair visible in the light of the streetlamps, which caught the silver braid on her trousers and the gold hoop that  hung in her ear. She towered over Tris- what elves she knew did, though she had never met a drow before- and she caught Tris’s eye and gave a quick wink. 

The  second figure was a halfling man- much shorter than any halfling she’d ever met- who, from what Tris could see, dressed like some of the halfling sailors she knew, in a leather jerkin, colored sash around the waist, and a somewhat battered-looking tricorn. Two blades hung at his side, and she could make out the shape of some sort of firearm slung over his shoulder. Unlike the halflings she’d met, however, he wore boots, rather than going barefoot.   
Silence fell between them for a moment, before the drow woman offered her hand with a small flourish. “Celestia Stardust, nice to meet you.”

“Tris Alnes.” Tris let go of her dagger and shook the offered hand. On her shoulder, Shriek gave another click. “And this is Shriek.”

The halfling tipped his hat. “Corzin Horhace.” 

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Horhace.”

“And I’m Scamp!” 

She couldn’t help but smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Scamp,” she said, stooping so she could offer Scamp her hand. For a moment she could see beneath Scamp’s hood, though she wasn’t sure of what she saw- pink skin and a tuft of silvery hair falling in front of their eyes. 

Scamp looked at the offered hand, then at Tris. “Are you really a duchess?”

Before Tris could answer that no, she wasn’t a duchess, Celestia shook her head.“She doesn’t look like a duchess to me, darling,” said the drow woman. “I don’t think duchesses frequent taverns in the company of sailors either.”

Tris almost wanted to laugh, to make some quip about how her father’d have a fit if he saw her in a tavern with ordinary sailors (the other officers, and a nicer tavern, perhaps, he wouldn’t mind so much), but she kept quiet on the matter. “I can assure you, I’m no duchess,” she said. “It’s just what Mr. Hutchinson and a few of his friends like to call me. There’s no truth to it.”

“And he was the one who was bullying Scamp, was he?”

“That’s him.” She shrugged. “He’s a capable sailor, there’s no question of that, but every crew’s got their troublemaker, and as luck would have it, ours is Mr. Hutchinson.” 

Overhead, there was the rumble of distant thunder, and the wind stirred, carrying the familiar scent of rain with it. A storm was on its way- Tris had seen the clouds when they made port, light grey and far in the distance enough that she didn’t consider it. A storm in harbor was no concern of hers, and perhaps it wouldn’t break quite yet, she couldn’t tell. 

Celestia glanced at the sky, then at her companions. “Why don’t we go find another pub, and we can continue this discussion somewhere out of the rain.” Her gaze rested on Tris. “No offense darling, but you look like you could use a drink.” 

As much as Tris hesitated to admit it, she knew Celestia was right, and a drink would do her some good after the confrontation with James earlier. Her heart was still racing- she had hardly noticed in the moment, but now she felt it- and she took a breath, willing it to slow. “None taken.” 

Shriek shook out her feathers and bent to pick a piece of hair from Tris’s braid. It was something to which Tris was well-accustomed to by now, and so she hardly flinched at the quick scrape of the osprey’s beak against her neck. 

Corzin glanced at the bird on Tris’s shoulder. “Will people be alright with Shriek?” 

“She can look after herself,” Tris was quick to assure, reaching to scratch Shriek on the neck, careful not to ruffle the bird’s feathers too much. She reached into the pouch at her belt, feeling around for the small bundle of oilcloth, cursing herself when she found it empty. “Shit.”

“Is something the matter?” 

Tris shook her head, and rubbed the back of her neck. “Everything’s fine,” she said, offering a tight-lipped smile to her new acquaintances. “The storm’s not far off- we should go find a pub, or somewhere out of the weather.” 

Corzin arched his brow, but said nothing. “Right,” he said, “shall we go find a place then?”

*** 

The tavern was busy, almost packed to the brim with sailors- none Tris knew from the  _ Drake _ , for which she was thankful- and then some others. A human woman with short hair and a rich blue sash around her waist was playing the fiddle on a small makeshift stage that was no doubt intended for such performances, while a pair of patrons played cards at another table.

There was a moment when Tris swore she saw a familiar face, but she didn’t dare stare. She’d had enough trouble for one evening, and at the moment, wanted nothing more than to share a drink with her new companions.

They got their drinks- whiskey for all but Scamp, who had a glass of milk for themselves- and settled at a table. A comfortable silence followed, and Tris took a few careful sips of her whiskey, letting it quiet the stir of magic in her veins. 

The warm prickling under her shirtsleeves and in her chest wasn’t an unusual sensation, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was used to it. She wondered for a brief moment (as she often did, when it came to these things) if her mother had ever grown used to it, but dismissed the thought, and took another sip of whiskey.    
“So who is it you sail with?” Corzin asked almost as soon as Tris set her glass down.

“ _ The Drake _ , under Captain Flintcreek,” she said.

“Are you a ship’s mage?” Scamp asked. “Because I saw you do magic earlier- you hit someone with lightning and made thunder happen indoors.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Her gaze dropped to the glass of whiskey in front of her. She could feel a lump rise in her throat, and she swallowed, trying to get rid of the feeling before she glanced up at Corzin and the others. “It was an accident.”

“Accident or not, darling, from what we heard, Mr. Hutchinson deserved it.” Celestia took a long sip of her whiskey and grinned. “There’s no need to apologize for anything, really.”

“Are you a sailor yourself, Mr. Horhace?” Tris asked, hoping to direct the conversation away from herself and her magic.

The halfling nodded. “I am.”

“And so are we.” Beneath the hood, Tris could see Scamp was grinning. “I’m a ship’s mage too.” 

“You’re a bit young to be a ship’s mage, aren’t you?”  _ You’re one to talk _ . “I don’t mean to be rude, but you do seem a bit young.” 

“I’m old enough, and it’s none of your business, is it?”

Tris shook her head. “No, it isn’t, I suppose.” She pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry, Scamp. I didn’t mean to suggest...Well, I’m sure you’re very capable, to have completed university at your age.”

Corzin and Celestia exchanged a look, but said nothing. 

“Did you go to university?” Scamp watched her with wide eyes, seemingly unaffected by her question in the way that their other two companions were. “Is that where you learned to do the little lightning thing?”

“I didn’t go to university, no,” came her answer. “My mother taught me.” 

It was a long time ago, when she was much younger- maybe a year or two older than whatever Scamp’s age was- but she remembered it well. Her mother had taught her what she knew of the basics of magic, and once Tris learned  the basics, she had taught Tris what she could of their shared magic. 

“Can she do lightning like you?”    
She paused for a moment, then nodded. “She could, yes.”

“How long are you in port?” Celestia watched her with furrowed brows. 

“A month at least,” Tris said, recalling the carpenter’s assessment when they actually made it to port. It wasn’t the longest she’d spent on land waiting for repairs, but it wouldn’t pass any more quickly. “What of yourselves?” 

“A little more than three weeks.” Celestia glanced at Corzin. “That is what Brandy said, isn’t it?” 

The halfling nodded. “It is.”

“We got caught in a really bad storm, and there were harpies,” Scamp explained, pausing to take a long drink of their milk. They wiped their mouth with the sleeve of their cloak, and Tris could clearly see a bright pink hand. “It was really scary.”

“It was ghastly, wasn’t it?” Celestia took a drink from her glass. “Though, I suppose it could’ve been worse. We could have sunk.”

“That would’ve been unfortunate indeed,” Tris said, fiddling with the pendant around her neck, grimacing as a quick spark jumped off the stone, striking her thumb. “Harpies are rather difficult, and on top of a storm too. Thank the Regent you made it to port.” 

“Is everything alright darling? That look like it hurt.”

“It’s just a spark,” Tris said, pushing a stray curl behind her ear, away from her face. “It doesn’t hurt, really. When I was younger...When I was younger, it would, but I suppose I’ve gotten used to it since then.”

“My magic sometimes does weird things too!” Scamp said. “Not really lightning, but I did make myself bigger on accident a few times...and  I made a unicorn appear a few times too- that was weird.” 

“I can’t say I’ve seen anything like that before- heard stories, perhaps, but never seen it, I’m afraid.” 

“That’s okay! I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

“You’re doing amazing darling, really.” 

Tris let her attention wander for a moment, her gaze drifting to where she had thought she saw a familiar face- in all likelihood, it was someone she’d sailed with before. She saw someone- a half orc from the look of him- enter the tavern and make his way through the crowd, stopping here and there to speak with some of the sailors. As he moved through the main room, there was a shift in the air, and the word soon reached the table where Tris, Corzin, Celestia and Scamp were settled- fire, down at the docks from the sound of things. 

“Sweet Regent,” Tris muttered, watching as several sailors hurried out the door, and she wondered if she should go too, to make sure the  _ Drake _ was alright. There wasn’t much she could do if the fire spread to the  _ Drake _ , but if she could help with what she could, maybe it wouldn’t all be for nothing.

She reached through her magic and gave the thread that linked her to Shriek a gentle tug, issuing an unspoken command of  _ Be ready _ , as she prepared to leave.

“Is everything alright, darling?”

“Something’s happened down at the docks,” she said, making sure her undersleeves were tucked securely under the cuffs of her shirt. It wouldn’t do for them to come loose, which they likely would, if she set to work without checking them first. “I should go. They might need my help.”

“We’ll come with you then,” Corzin said, finishing off his whiskey. “If it’s trouble down at the docks, it’s all of our business, I suppose.”

Tris had already risen from her seat, smoothing what was no doubt imaginary crease in her skirt. If they were to make it to the docks before there was too much of a crowd, or before too much damage was done to any ships, they would have to move quickly. 

She knew if she got there soon enough, she would be able to help. If- by some miracle- it was raining, she could maybe do more to help, but she knew she couldn’t count on the weather to be on her side. She’d have to trust that the spirits her mother had often spoken about would give her something to work with, and if not, well she would make do- she usually did.


	3. Chapter 3

There was already a sizeable crowd gathered at the docks when Tris and her new companions arrived, watching as fire spread across the deck of a bilander that Tris had noticed earlier, flying Wendish colors. She could smell the fire alongside the familiar taste of an oncoming storm, the promise of rain almost completely masked by the sharp scent of the smoke, and even that was enough to tell her that this wasn’t something that could be allowed to spread. 

_ Go on then- fix this.  _

“Scamp, can I hold on to you? I need to do something, but I won’t be able to see.” She began tugging at the thread that bound her to Shriek, and took a breath, preparing herself.

Without a yes or no, Scamp took her by the hand, and Tris would be lying if she said she wasn’t even the slightest bit startled by the gesture- but there was no time for that now. 

Another breath, and Tris tightened her hold on the thread, bracing herself as she merged her conscious with Shriek’s. 

She’d done this plenty of times before, but the sudden change in altitude was still somewhat dizzying, and it took a moment to adjust to having sharper sight than she was used to. As she took a moment to gather her bearings, she glanced down at the gathered crowd. She knew she wouldn’t be able to pick out Flintcreek or any of her other crewmates from where Shriek was, but she saw Celestia, whose dandelion-puff hair stood out in the same way Tris’s red hair usually did, though perhaps to a greater extent, given the drow’s height and the sheer amount of silver braid.

Once she had her bearings, Tris streered Shriek towards the bilander, in an attempt to discern the nature of the fire. She had to push the bounds of her magic to get close enough, and in the back of her head, her feet moved forward, letting Scamp maneuver her through the crowd as best they could. 

She directed Shriek to circle the deck, the tether between her and the bird  pulling taut as she did so. Heat swelled around her as as a tendril of flame reached for her, and she glided out of reach just in time. Below her, the flame spread along the deck, winding around the mast and beginning to chew at the canvas sails. 

Shriek flew away from the flames as they consumed the canvas, and Tris broke the connection between herself and her familiar.

She pulled her hand from Scamp’s hold and pushed a piece of red hair that had somehow escaped her braid out of her face. “I need to do something,” she said, looking to the sky, hopeful for the tiniest scrap of wind to grasp and direct at the fire.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Scamp said. “It’s spreading really quickly.”

“Scamp’s right, darling. I don’t think there’s much we can do to help.”  

“I want to try.” The ship couldn’t be saved- the moment the mainmast caught fire, Tris knew she was done for- but she worried about containing it. If it was left on its own, it would spread to the Drake and any other ships nearby. “It might spread if no one does anything.”

She didn’t have much that would help immediately- she couldn’t manipulate water or bring down rain the way she knew some with her kind of magic could do- but she knew she had to try. The  _ Drake _ wasn’t far enough away that it was out of danger, and she knew ultimately, there was little chance of success.

“You’re right to worry about it spreading,” Corzin told her, “but I don’t know what you can do about it.” 

“I have a spell that can work.” She felt her magic picking up at the mention of a spell, the tempest stone growing warm against her skin. “I can clear the smoke, and I have something that will keep it from spreading too much.”

A steady drizzle had started to fall from the sky, and a quiet rumble of thunder echoed overhead, followed by a distant arc of lightning. Around her, the wind began to stir.  

The storm had arrived, and Tris hoped the rain would help, though she had her doubts. 

Doubt or no, she had to help. She had magic, she had to at least  _ try _ . 

Without a word, she made her way through the crowd towards the burning ship, the wind that came with the storm following her as dolphins follow sailing ships. 

Magic wound around her wrist and fingers, and Tris reached to grasp the wind, taking hold of it as if it were a rope, and casting it out towards the burning ship. It swirled around her for a moment before following the direction she had given it. With any luck, it would drive the rain towards the ship, but she knew for sure it would clear the smoke. 

_ Think, Tristana, think. What would your mother do? _

As much as she shared with her mother- her magic, the wild curls of red hair that twirled in the wind, eyes like the sea before a storm, and the position of ship’s mage onboard the  _ Wisp _ \- she knew there were differences between them. Her mother had known what to do with her magic, she caught the wind with the same ease as she belayed a line, and Tris was sure her magic had never acted on its own before. Her mother had known others with her magic, and had a chance to learn its full extent- she hadn’t been left to figure it out on her own, as Tris had been.

The magic in her hands turned cold as Tris drew a breath, recalling the cold days of First Flurries and Falling Snow, when her breath formed little clouds and snowflakes caught in her hair. She drew on the memories of the cold air as she exhaled, letting her breath fill with frost. As the spell was cast, Tris felt the wind pick up around her, as if it wanted to lift her into the air, and she let it lift her a few feet off the dock. 

She could hear the crackling of fire consuming timber, and she watched as fire curled over the gunwales, reaching for the ropes that tethered the bilander to the docks. She exhaled another cone of frosty air, a desperate attempt to keep the fire from spreading over the gunwale.  

The cold magic was followed by a stuttering cough as the smoke in the air curled against the back of her throat. Her eyes stung and tears clouded her vision, but she wiped at them with the back of her hand, ignoring the quiet scratch of wool undersleeves against her skin.

She gave the wind a tug, dispelling the smoke as best she could. The flames guttered slightly, but didn’t diminish, as she’d hoped they might; the mainmast was a column of flame spitting embers to the wind, the mainsail burnt to useless scraps at this rate. 

Tris called more magic to her, but it balked in her grasp, erupting in a small arc of lighting that struck the side of the Wendish ship, setting its hull alight. 

“No, no, no,” she muttered, taking a step back and covering her mouth with shaking hands. She could feel her heart racing as she struggled to take a breath that would guide her magic away from the ship, before she hurt anyone else. 

The wind slipped from her grasp, spinning out of control around her, stealing the breath from her as she tried to take another breath. From her palms to her chest, she could feel the sudden flare of magic, as if someone was drawing molten glass through her veins, lasting no longer than a flash of lightning and hurting just as much.

She felt someone’s hand grasp her elbow, keeping her from taking another step backwards, and she pulled away. “Don’t touch me,” she said, shaking her head. 

“Tris, darling, there’s nothing else you can do.”

_ I need to try _ .

“You need to step away, darling. There isn’t anything else you can do.”

_ I need- _

Something brushed against her cheek and then settle around her shoulders with the same lightness as a silk scarf. As the feeling settled around her, she felt her panic subside enough that when she felt a hand grasp her elbow, she didn’t immediately fight back- there was no need.

“There you go. Let’s find a place where you can sit.” Celestia kept her hand on Tris’s elbow, guiding her through the crowd, speaking softly as they went- Tris didn’t hear enough to string any of it together, too fixated on the hammering of her heart. “Try and take deep breaths, darling, we’re almost there, there you go.”

She drew a stuttering breath, grimacing at the pain in her throat as she exhaled. In and out- like waves washing ashore, like the rocking of the  _ Wisp _ on a calm sea. She did as Celestia asked, kept her attention on breathing and let Celestia take the lead.

The silk scarf around her shoulders lifted as they put distance between them and the docks, but the a quiet panic lingered at the back of Tris’s mind as overhead, thunder rolled across the sky. The rain was falling more heavily now, soaking through the wool capelet that she wore to keep out the chill, right to her shirt underneath. 

It wasn’t much longer until they made their way to a tavern- Corzin and Scamp had joined them somewhere along the way, Tris wasn’t entirely sure- and Celestia had led her up the stairs to a cozy room. 

She felt like a child, small and shaking- half from anxiety and half from the cold- on the bed of the room she supposed was Celestia’s or Scamp’s, or maybe even Corzin’s. With shaking hands, she unbuttoned her caplet, letting it fall beside her, and then she wiped the rainwater from her brow. Her breathing was steady, her heart less frantic, but she knew from experience that the shaking would last a while longer, and then her whole body would ache, as if she’d used every shred of energy she had.

She couldn’t help but think of the arc of lightning that had struck James earlier, and then the bolt that had lept forth from her just then, striking the Wendish bilander’s hull and setting it alight. She thought she had gotten better at keeping hold of her power. Wind was harmless enough, but lightning was dangerous- she knew that better than anyone, perhaps. What kind of mage was she, if she couldn’t keep a hold of her own magic, and what would her mother’s family say, if they knew?

“Do you want a sweet?” Large pink eyes met hers, and a pink hand held out a single wrapped sweet. “It has honey in it. Corzin said honey might help.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the sweet, but not making any attempt to unwrap it. Her eyes widened when it clicked in her head- the thought had been there since she’d met Scamp- that Scamp, in addition to having pink skin, had a pair of curling black rams’ horns atop their head. “Scamp, are you a tiefling?” 

“Are you going to throw rocks at me?” 

She shook her head. “No, of course not.” She fiddled with the sweet’s wrapper. “I’m sorry...I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay. Sometimes people find out and they stop being nice.”

“And...and they throw rocks?”

Scamp nodded. “But Celestia said she’ll throw rocks back at anyone who does it now.”

Tris couldn’t help but laugh- a quiet, strained sound, followed by a bout of coughing. 

“Here,” Corzin passed Tris a ceramic cup. “It’s a bit strong, but it’ll help with any smoke inhalation.” 

Tris took a cautious sip of what she automatically assumed was tea, and wrinkled her nose at the strong taste-  _ a lady doesn’t show her disgust _ , a voice in the back of her head reminded her. “Licorice?”

Corzin nodded. “My great-aunt swore by it, and I’ve never known it not to work.”

“Thank you.” She took another sip, anticipating the taste this time. She made a quick gesture under the cup, letting her magic cover the taste of licorice with the sweetness of honey. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Corzin told her. “You did what you could to help, and that’s what matters.” 

“But it wasn’t enough was it?”

“You did what you could, and that’s what matters, darling. It’s out of your hands now.” Celestia sat beside Tris on the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. The rain had flattened her dandelion-puff, though her blouse was miraculously dry. “Why don’t you get some rest, and we can sort things in the morning.”

“I need to tell Captain Flintcreek what happened, and where I am.” 

“If you want, I can do a quick sending to them, tell them you’re alright, and where you are, and anything else.”

Tris nodded. “That...that would be nice, thank you,”she said, finishing off the tea. She could feel the exhaustion setting in, weighing her bones down. “Thank you for the tea, Mr. Horhace. Your great-aunt knows what she’s talking about with the licorice.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Jeffry!”

The monkey didn’t seem to heed Scamp’s warning, and instead let out a piercing scream as Shriek let out a trill of her own. His tail was raised and his hair stood on end- even like that, he was still small compared to Shriek, whose feathers were fluffed up, and her wings spread as wide as they could be in the present space.

“Shriek.” Tris reached along her bond to Shriek and instructed the bird to calm down, waiting until Shriek’s feathers settled and her wings were tucked against her sides to relax her grip.

Perhaps emboldened by Shriek’s submission, Jeffry crept forward, ears still flattened against his head and tail held high. With a tiny hand, he reached out as if to swat or grab at her, prompting a warning snap from the large bird, who fluffed her feathers and let out another trill.

“Jeffry, come here.” Scamp went to collect their pet, but before they could scoop the delinquent monkey into their arms, Shriek lunged for him.

 _I’m sorry._ Tris pulled on her tie to Shriek, hard enough to pull the bird into off of the plane for the time being. “I’m sorry about that. Shriek’s not used to others, and, well, she’s not exactly the right shape at the moment to play with Jeffry.”

“Where did she go?”

“Excuse me?”

“Shriek. She was there, and then she was gone.” Pink eyes widened. “Is she magic too?”

Tris smiled. “She is.”

“And what do you mean, she isn’t the right shape? Is something wrong with her?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her,” Tris was quick to assure. “The spell that made her, it lets me change her shape if I want.”

“And it lets you can just poof her like that?”

A small nod. “It does, yes.”

Scamp hopped onto the bed, letting Jeffry climb onto their shoulder, where he settled, a couple of nuts in his tiny hands. “Could you teach me? I’m very good at learning magic things, and maybe I can teach you how to make horses!”

“You can make horses?” There was little use that a ship’s mage had for horses, but Tris was admittedly intrigued by the prospect. She was limited in her ability to create or summon creatures- Shriek was the extent of her ability- and the opportunity to expand her repertoire was too good to resist. “I’m impressed.”

Scamp puffed out their chest. “And they’re really fast, too.”

“I’ll take you up on your offer then,” Tris said, grinning. “It might have to wait until later today, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“My books are on board the _Drake_ .” She checked that her undersleeves were straight, using a bit of her magic to pull any lingering dampness from the grey wool and depositing it on the floor of the room. “And I’ll need them, if I’m going to show you anything.” _Not to mention that Flintcreek will be expecting an explanation for last night_.

Her stomach rolled at the thought. As confident as Tris was in her ability to argue her case- and confident, too, that Amery would offer to stand as witness- there was still the nagging fear that James had gotten to speak his piece last night, and there was no telling who saw what happened at the docks. She didn’t know what James thought he knew, but she wasn’t willing to risk anyone finding out what was really none of their business to know.

Flintcreek would be fair, this much Tris was sure of, and for that, she was glad. She’d sailed with plenty of ships where the captain would not be as forgiving, and she thanked the Regent that she had avoided trouble with crewmates on those vessels.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Tris blinked, pushing thoughts of Flintcreek and James Hutchinson aside as Scamp spoke. “Pardon?”

“What happened last night, with the ship. It isn’t your fault.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she said. But what was done was done, and there was no changing it. Next time she would be better, she would hold her magic with a clenched fist, rather than let it slip between her fingers like loose sand. “Next time it won’t happen.”

“Maybe there won’t be a next time.” They gave Jeffry a few scratches between the ears, and reached into their cloak pockets, fishing out a sweet, unwrapping it, and popping it in their mouth.

“You’ll spoil your breakfast, you know,” Tris said, unable to hold back a small grin as she spoke. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you shouldn’t have sweets before breakfast?”

Scamp furrowed their brow. “I don’t think so. I don’t really remember my mother- or my dad.”

“I...I’m sorry,” Tris said, glancing away for a moment. “I didn’t mean...Please excuse me, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure there was someone, but I don’t remember them that well.” They crumpled up the sweet wrapper and tucked it away in their pockets. “What is your mother like? She doesn’t sound very fun, if she doesn’t let you have sweets before breakfast.”

Tris found herself hesitating, picking through her words.

She ran her thumb along the curve of the hagstone- her mother’s, once upon a time- that she kept on her belt, thinking. “She was kind, and my father always said she was the loveliest woman he’d ever met.”

She remembered her mother well, a half-elf woman with same hair and eyes as her daughter, though she wore the curls loose in the wind, rather than twist them into the tight braid, as Tris did. Her voice was sweet, with an accent that told of a childhood spent in the Tyrian States- a childhood she rarely spoke of, if ever.

“She told me a lot of stories, when I was little.”

Her mother’s stories were old ones, tales of the sea and sky, interspersed with stories of the saints and their deeds. Sometimes, while sitting on the deck of the _Wisp_ , with a canopy of diamond stars overhead and the gentle, familiar rock of the waves beneath, her mother would speak of spirits that moved the gusts and tides. Tris remembered her story of the seabird spirit who appeared to her saints-know-how-many-times-great-grandmother, and gave her the magic to call winds and turn away rain.

“She sounds very nice.” Scamp unwrapped a second sweet. “I wish someone had taught me magic like you said she did.”

“She taught me what she could,” Tris said, her gaze drifting to the window, attempting to gauge the hour- anything to distract her from thoughts of her mother. Already, she had allowed herself to think too long on something she knew was best left untouched. “Speaking of which, I think you agreed to teach me how to make a horse.”

“And you said you’d teach me to make an animal like Shriek.” Scamp pressed their lips into a thoughtful line, which interrupted only by their longer incisors. “You don’t think Jeffry would be offended if I made him a friend, do you?”

“I don’t think so,” Tris said, doing up the buttons on her capelet and smoothing a crease in her skirt. “I think he would like it, really. Most animals get lonely if they’re left on their own.”

She hoped they would be able to get on and off the _Drake_ without any encounters with James. A conversation with Captain Flintcreek would be necessary to straighten out the events of the previous evening, and that Tris could manage. She knew her position as ship’s mage would afford her some credibility- her word versus his, when he had started the fight- but she knew better than to expect it to protect her completely, as rank was supposed to.

“Your friends will be waiting for us,” she said after a moment’s pause. “It won’t do to keep them.”


	5. Chapter 5

When they made their way downstairs, the tavern’s main room was already beginning to fill with other patrons, and so Tris took hold of Scamp’s hand to keep from losing them in the gathering crowd. Corzin and Celestia weren’t difficult to find, seeing as Celestia was tall and distinct enough on her own that Tris didn’t have to spend too much time searching the crowd. Again, there was the strange sense of a familiar face, of someone watching her, but she shook it off, dismissing it as her own paranoia. 

Tris settled herself at the table and accepted a small cup of small beer as it was offered to her by Celestia. “Apologies for the delay.”

“It’s no trouble. Everything’s alright I hope?”

“Shriek and Jeffry-”

“Shriek’s magic, and Tris going to teach me how she made Shriek!” 

“I didn’t  _ make _ Shriek, not really,” Tris said. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’ll make sense when I can show you, I’m sure.”

“Did your mother teach you to do that, like she taught you the lightning trick?”

Tris shook her head. “No.” 

Shriek had come after her mother was gone, when Tris had buried herself in books about magic as the  _ Wisp _ waited to be repaired. 

She remembered studying the strange arrangement of glyphs on the page, committing each to the pages of her own book. As soon as she’d been sure, she had asked her father for the money to buy supplies for the spell, and once she had her supplies, she spent the next day in her room at the inn, making sure everything was perfect for her spell. The spell would call and bind a fey spirit to her service, in a shape she could change as she needed. When she was finished with the spell, she’d shown Shriek to her father, and she remembered that he’d wept. 

“I need to get my things, if I’m going to show you how to do it,” Tris said, moving on at least from the topic of her mother. “And I need a word with my captain, about last night.”

“Would it help at all for us to come along?” Celestia asked. “We did see it happen, and Scamp was involved.”

Corzin nodded. “It would help you make a stronger case for yourself, if nothing else.”

“It couldn’t hurt, I suppose.” She glanced at Scamp. “Would that be alright with you?”

Scamp hesitated, their gaze flicking to Corzin, and briefly, Celestia, before they nodded. “I don’t mind, if it’ll help things.” 

Tris gave the tiefling a small nod of thanks. “Thank you.” She found herself fidgeting with her sleeves, stopping almost as soon as she realized what she was doing. “The rest of the crew’ll probably be sleeping off last night, so you shouldn’t get any trouble from them.” 

“Is trouble something we should worry about?”

She shook her head. “It isn’t,” she said, “ but if we delay further, I can’t make any promises.”

She was fairly confident that she knew where James was- in all likelihood, he was waking up with a hangover, in one of the port’s many brothels- and therefore certain he wouldn’t be in a position to give her or her companions any difficulty. She could assume the same for his friends, though they were a lesser concern, as they were only ordinary sailors, who would only act if James told them to, and she doubted they would think to cause trouble if they were on their own. 

They finished breakfast and headed to where the  _ Drake _ was docked, with Tris at the head of the party.

A light fog had found its way to the streets that morning, no doubt having come in on the heels of last night’s storm. A light drizzle fell from the sky, cold pinpricks against Tris’s brow and the back of her neck. She knew that if she wanted, she could reach out and cause the rain to stop, but she held back, not wanting to draw attention to herself or her companions. There had been enough of that already, and after last night, there was probably a Wendish captain who wanted to know the name of the mage who’d sealed the fate of his vessel. 

They were almost to the docks- just another street- when Scamp said, “I think someone’s following us.” 

Tris stopped, taking a moment to glance over her shoulder.

Aside from people clearly going about their business, there was no one who appeared to be outright following them. There was a scrawny halfling boy hawking what Tris assumed to be the  _ Perbrook Standard’s  _ morning edition, but she doubted that he was who Scamp had meant was following them. 

“No one’s following us,” she told Scamp, already beginning to move again. She felt her magic stir, and she cast it outward, producing a short burst of wind that wound through the fog without disturbing it too noticeably. “And if they are, I don’t know what they expect to find.” 

There was no denying that Scamp’s words lingered in the back of Tris’s mind as they walked the rest of the way, but Tris was determined to hide it. If someone was following them, she couldn’t think what they hoped to gain from it. They were a handful of sailors on their way to the docks- hardly anything out of the ordinary, really- and Perbrook was out of the way enough that such things would not be a danger. 

_ Danger or no, it’s best you keep your wits about you. _

It wasn’t long before the  _ Drake  _ was in sight- easily distinguishable by the three masts that rose higher than most (to catch the winds, so it could speed along the water much more quickly than any other ship she’d sailed with), the sails folded up out of the wind- moored alongside a smaller two-masted cutter ship that Tris recognized, though she almost didn’t believe it. 

As they approached the  _ Drake _ , Tris caught sight of a familiar half-elf woman in elegant leather armor leaning against a cluster of barrels. One dark blue eye watched Tris and her companions- the other was covered by an eyepatch.

“I thought I saw you last night,” the half-elf called, giving Tris a sly grin. She glanced at Celestia, Corzin, and Scamp, then back at Tris. “Are these new crewmates of yours?”

Tris pressed her lips into a tight line. “They’re...friends,” she said, wincing a little at the term.

She’d known them for less than a day, so “friends” was hardly the proper term, but what proper term was there? Perhaps there was none- but that didn’t seem immediately important, and so she would let it lie. 

“Good to see you’re finally making friends, Alnes. It’ll do you good.” 

_ I have friends _ , Tris thought, but didn’t say.  _ I have Amery, and I have Shriek _ . 

Amery was definitely the closest thing Tris had to a friend. She’d been the only other child on board the  _ Wisp _ \- five years Tris’s senior and the daughter of one of the riggers on board- and so naturally the two had been close as children. As they’d grown and taken up their respective positions on board, there was no longer time to play hide-and-find in the hold or race each other up the rigging, but they still found time for each other when they were on the same shift. There had been stolen moments before Amery left, but that was all, and it wasn’t something they spoke about these days. 

After a pause too long to be considered polite, the half-elf woman spoke. “Are you at least going to introduce us, or keep me in suspense?” she asked, arching a dark brow. “Or shall I do it myself?”

Tris felt herself blush. “May I introduce you to Corzin, Scamp, and Celestia,” she said, gesturing to each of her companions in turn, and then to the half-elf. “Captain Lavan Vanderzee, of the  _ Rose Dawn _ .”

With the same elegant flourish as she’d introduced herself to Tris the previous evening, Celestia offered Lavan a hand. “Celestia Stardust, nice to meet you.” 

Lavan shook Celestia’s hand. “Pleasure’s mine.”

As formalities were exchanged, Tris cursed herself for neglecting to check when the  _ Drake _ had reached port, which other vessels were in port. There were many ships in the sea- that much was true- and there was a slim chance of  running into any ships she might know, but still, it was better to be cautious than be caught unawares and pay the price.

“You’ll have to excuse us,” Tris said, standing a little straighter and smoothing a crease in her skirt. “We have business to attend to, and it’s rather urgent, I’m afraid, so we should really be getting on our way.”

“You haven’t changed much, have you? Still business first, I see.” Lavan let out a quiet huff of a laugh, but any trace of humor was soon gone from her expression, replaced by a gravity that Tris had only seen once before. “When you’re done, why don’t you join me for a drink at the Mermaid’s Purse? There’s something I think you might be interested to know about- well, I’ll tell you later. You’re welcome to bring your friends along, if you’d like.”

Tris felt her stomach drop ever-so slightly. “About what?” she asked, more for the sake of clarification than anything else- she almost didn’t care that there were three strangers present. 

“You know what,” came Lavan’s response. “But more of that later. You have somewhere to be, and I know better than to keep you. Go on now. We’ll have a chat about it later, once you’ve sorted whatever it is you’re so intent to get over with.”

“Of course.” She took a breath to steady herself, and to dispel the anxious roll of her stomach, before she spoke again. “It was a pleasure to see you again, Captain.”

“Likewise, Alnes. I’ll see you later, and we’ll talk then.”

**

They found Captain Flintcreek where Tris expected to- in her small stateroom checking over the records of the various prizes the crew had taken since they were last in port. She was a dwarven woman, with a dark beard that was well-kept and embellished with several silver rings engraved with scrollwork that resembled waves. Tawny eyes watched Tris with a hawk’s intensity as the young woman recounted what had transpired in the tavern the previous night, the rest of her expression indecipherable.

“Just so I understand correctly, Ms. Alnes, Mr. Hutchinson attacked a sailor from another crew, unprovoked, and when you tried to break up the fight, he attacked you?”

Tris nodded, hesitant to break eye contact with her captain. “That is correct.”

Captain Flintcreek returned the nod, her attention shifting to Corzin and Celestia. “And you witnessed this altercation?” 

“We did, yes,” Corzin said. “Ms. Alnes did try and speak with Mr. Hutchinson, in order to try and break up the fight, and then he struck her.” 

“He had a couple friends with him,” Celestia added. “A halfling and another human, I think.” 

“Tomas Rosebuck and Henry Middleton,”  Tris interjected- against her better nature, really. “They were also involved, Captain, though they ceased when asked.”

“And Mr. Hutchinson did not?”

“No Captain.” 

“And you took no physical action against him?”

“No Captain.” She broke eye contact for a moment, but recovered hopefully before Flintcreek could notice. 

She knew that if Flintcreek were to ask James, he would say Tris had used magic against him, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She hoped that her word would outweigh his- it had to, surely- and the conflict would be resolved as quickly and neatly as possible. 

Flintcreek pressed her lips together- thinking. “Very well,” she said. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Ms. Alnes.” 

“Of course,” Tris said, giving her captain a slight nod of  acknowledgement. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“It’s better you bring this to my attention than let it fester,” Flintcreek said, a small smile (which Tris would almost dare to consider approval from the captain) on her lips. “And thank you for being so considerate as to bring witnesses. We’ll see if Mr. Hutchinson manages to think that far ahead.”

“Indeed.” Despite the captain’s approval, Tris found it hard to relax. “Thank you, Captain.” 

“You may go, Ms. Alnes.” The captain gave a nod to Corzin, Celestia, and Scamp. “As may you, Mr. Horhace, Ms. Stardust, Scamp. Thank you for your help.” 

“Glad to be of help,” Corzin said, straightening his tricorn before leading the way out of Flintcreek’s stateroom. 

Tris was the last to leave, her mind already on what she needed from her quarters.

First and foremost, she would need her books with the _ Find Familiar _ spell she’d learnt by heart all those years ago. Perhaps she would bring her pack as well, in case she ended up spending another night away from the  _ Drake _ . She had a feeling that- depending on what Lavan had to say- she might be spending more than a few nights away from her ship, but it was too early to say.

“One thing at a time,” she told herself as she arranged things in her pack, taking only what she knew she needed, including a map of the coast, with marks at various ports, and a series of dates and quick notes. Anything else, she could come back for, or find a place to purchase them. She knew she would need incense, just in case anything happened to Shriek, but she could probably find that in town. 

Shopping would unfortunately  have to wait until after Tris had met with Lavan. She knew it was likely to go beyond the casual discussion over drinks that her old captain had implied, especially if it concerned what Tris suspected it did, but if it was what Tris suspected, then it would be worth it.

  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Once she had everything she thought she would need- most importantly her books and map, with a few other bits that would likely prove useful- Tris disembarked and rejoined Scamp and the others at the docks, so they could begin their journey to the Mermaid’s Purse to meet Lavan. She didn’t speak much over the course of the journey, content to listen to the others talk between them while she led the way. She had half the mind to call Shriek to her- no doubt her familiar would be disgruntled after spending so long in her pocket dimension- but she decided against it, reluctant to risk recognition. 

“After you talk with your old captain, are you going to show me how to make an animal like Shriek?” Scamp asked, pulling Tris from her musings. 

“Depends on what Captain Vanderzee wants to talk about,” Tris said, “but as soon as we finish, we can definitely start on it, yes.” 

“Do you know what she wants to talk about?”

She pressed her lips in a tight line. “I...It’s complicated, I suppose.”

She had an inkling of what it might be, but she still couldn’t help but wonder how Lavan had come into any sort of knowledge on the subject. Then again, the  _ Rose Dawn’s _ captain had always given the impression she knew more than she let on, though Tris wondered why Lavan would care enough to think of telling her in the first place, or if there was something she was missing. 

“Oh. Okay.”

“What kind of business is Captain Vanderzee in?” Corzin appeared on Tris’s other side, and she cursed herself for not catching his footsteps- but it wasn’t anything of great import. “If you don’t mind.”

“Privateering,” came Tris’s answer, “at least, she was when I sailed under her. I don’t know if she’s stayed in that line of work.”

“Hasn’t had much reason as of late, I suppose, has she?” 

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid. I’ve been with the  _ Drake _ the past two years.”

“Fair enough, I suppose.” Corzin glanced ahead. “She said the Mermaid’s Purse, right? I think this is it.” 

The sign for the tavern displayed a woman with a fish tail that perhaps once had been glistening with fresh paint, and in her hands was a reticule with some kind of quick detailing. There were no windows facing the street, but perhaps that was to be expected of some places, especially since they seemed to have made their way into what Tris could only describe a rougher part of dockside taverns. 

She caught sight of a familiar halfling leaning against the side of the building- the silvery-grey mohawk stuck in her memory- and almost called out, but then thought better of it. Once she was close enough, she did pause to give the halfling a polite nod. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Sacks.” 

They returned the nod. “Captain Lavan mentioned you’d be coming ‘round at some point,” they said. They surveyed her companions- there was a bit of a curl of their lip as they spotted Celestia, but it settled almost as soon as it arose- and pushed at the cuff of their work-shirt. “She’s in the back room, said to bring your friends too.”

“Thank you.” She had half the mind to ask them what Lavan wanted, but thought better of it. “I’ll go see her immediately, then.”

“And best you do, Bird-Eyes. Go on now- don’t know how willing Lavan is to wait for you.” 

“Always wonderful talking with you too, Mr. Sacks,” Tris said, already brushing past the halfling to enter the tavern. 

As she navigated the crowd of patrons that filled the tavern’s main room, Tris did her best not to think about the interaction with Calla Sacks. They’d always been a bit brusque during her time on the  _ Rose Dawn _ , but that was their way, to be rough and short with others. Marora always said it was because Tris was eighteen when she signed on with the crew as sailing master, and Calla didn’t think a child should be an officer- but if she was capable at the time, surely there was no issue.

Sure enough, Tris found Lavan in the back room, sitting at the table that occupied a fair portion of the room, with a bottle of whiskey and several glasses nearby. The captain of the  _ Rose Dawn _ stood as they entered, and Tris caught sight of a dagger with an elaborate hilt hanging at her side- a change from the more simple dagger she used to carry. 

“I hope things went well with Olena?” she asked. She gestured to the chairs that circled the table. “Please, sit.”

“I...I wasn’t aware you knew Captain Flintcreek.” Tris hesitated for a moment before taking a seat, sparing a glance for Celestia, Corzin, and Scamp before turning her attention to Lavan. “What is it you wanted to speak about?”

“Patience, Bird-Eyes.” Lavan grinned, then repeated the gesture towards the chairs. “Olena and I, we’ve crossed paths before- nothing to worry yourself over. I’ll tell you what I know once your friends here sit, that way we can have a nice chat between us.”

Tris nodded. “Is it about the  _ Hind _ ?” she asked, switching to a language she knew she and Lavan shared- she remembered her mother speaking it on the bow of the  _ Blue Wisp _ , and how it sounded like the rush of wind and waves- so that at least something could be kept between them. 

Celestia settled on one side of her, and Scamp on the other, with Corzin on the drow’s other side, and Tris felt at least Celestia’s attention fall on her as she spoke. 

“You still drink whiskey, I trust?” Lavan began pouring a glass of whiskey for each of them before topping up her own with a grin. “This is better than what you used to keep in your bunk- I hope that won’t be a problem.” 

Tris glanced at the whorls in the table and shrunk back into her chair. “Whiskey’s fine,” she said, a quiet sharpness in her voice as she spoke. She could feel a knot coil in her stomach, and she reached for one of the glasses of whiskey, determined to claim her own. “You mentioned something interesting earlier, and I’d love to know what.” 

“I’d love to know what as well,” Corzin said, his gaze resting on Lavan, than Tris. “I think the three of us are a bit in the dark.”

“Tris hasn’t told you?” Lavan arched a brow, and Tris could hear the laugh in her voice. “Well, allow me to fill in some gaps- unless Tris would rather do it herself.” 

White-hot feeling ran from Tris’s shoulder and to her fingertips, erupting in a wild gust that blew Lavan’s dark hair away from her face and stirred the light silk of Celestia’s blouse. She grit her teeth and reined it in, taking a long sip of whiskey to settle her magic before she thought to speak. 

“There’s a ship I’m looking for, the  _ Black Hind _ ,” she said, maintaining steady eye contact with Lavan as she spoke. “Captain Vanderzee-” 

“Captain Lavan, please.” 

“Captain Vanderzee, I believe, has found out something about them, and was intending to tell me what she’d found.”

Any other details would have to wait, as Tris was unsure if she wanted to speak the why and wherefore of it all at once. She prayed to the Regent that her new companions wouldn’t press further, or at least understand if she kept things to herself on this matter. 

“Indeed,” Lavan said, taking a sip from her glass. “There’s very few captains who would set a ship on fire in port, you know.” 

“No  _ respectable _ captain,” Corzin muttered, then, somewhat louder, “What’s it got to do with the  _ Black Hind _ ?”

“Captain Asselin likes to make it very clear, that when she’s not given what she asks for, there’s hell to pay.” 

Asselin. 

It was strange to have a name to give the person whose vessel she was chasing, when for the last few years, it had only been the name of the ship itself. It was strange, too, for Tris to be even a step closer to something she’d spent years chasing, to have it well within reach.

“She wouldn’t happen to be a pirate, would she?”

“She is,” Tris said flatly, her gaze flickering to Corzin. “From Suul, I think.” 

The halfling’s brow furrowed. “You’ve met her before then?”

“A long time ago.” She’d been a child- properly a child- then, but she remembered. Her attention returned to Lavan. “You’re saying she set the ship on fire last night, aren’t you?”

Which means she was ( _ or _ , spoke a hopeful voice,  _ she still is _ ) in Perbrook, which in turn meant Tris was so  _ close _ .

Lavan nodded. “I’ve no reason to believe otherwise,” she said, “and Marora saw the  _ Hind _ in the harbor yesterday- flying false colors, of course- but, if Asselin has as much sense as she’s got nerve, she left as soon as that poor Wendish ship was ash.”

“There’s more.” Tris could hear it in Lavan’s voice, the way her sentence seemed to hang in the air. “You wouldn’t tell me something like that and leave it there.”

“You’re a clever girl, Alnes- I always liked that about you- and you’ve got a good sense of right and wrong.” Lavan paused. “I admittedly like that less, but I think we can both agree that Asselin shouldn’t get away with foul play like that.”

Along her arms and across her chest, all the way to the palms of her hands, Tris felt the prickle of magic. Asselin had done much worse than burn a merchant vessel and Tris knew the end the  _ Hind’s _ captain deserved to meet, an end Tris would happily see to herself if she ever caught up to the vessel. 

“The  _ Hind _ has a day’s head start on you at least, if chasing her is what you’re planning to do,” Tris pointed out. “And her crew will outnumber the  _ Rose’s _ by at least twice as much.”

There was little she remembered of her encounter with the  _ Hind _ , though the rush of pirates over the gunwales of the Wisp was easy enough to recall. It was easy enough to remember her father’s shouts as he directed his sailors to defend their cargo, to remember the rising tide of sound as the enemy descended upon them. 

The  _ Rose Dawn _ wouldn’t hold in a battle against the  _ Hind- _ perhaps she could more than match the Suulian ship in speed, but when it came to a fight, the  _ Rose’s _ crew was too small, her guns not strong enough. 

“Which is why I was thinking I might ask you- and your friends- if you would join me. You’ve clearly grown in power since I last saw you, though you do need to work on a few things, I suppose, and your friends would no doubt make fine additions to the crew, however temporarily.” 

Tris bit her lip. “The  _ Drake _ is only in port for a month,” she said. “And then we sail as soon as she’s declared fit.”

“If we leave with the evening tide, we can catch the Hind before the week’s out,” Lavan said. “And don’t worry, I’d never steal a ship’s mage from Olena unless I absolutely had to.” 

“You make it sound as if you’ve done that before,” Celestia said, narrowing her eyes at Lavan. 

“Desperate times often call for desperate  measures, I’m afraid, but it was only once, and they we returned in good condition to their captain.” Lavan flashed the drow woman a wicked grin, then turned her attention to Tris.  “You can have your bunk, and we’ll negotiate shares and the rest if you agree.”

“I need time to think,” Tris said, glancing at Scamp, Corzin, then finally, Celestia. “And discuss it with my...with my friends.”

“Of course,”  Lavan said, giving a nod of acknowledgement. “Meet at the  _ Rose Dawn _ before the tide goes out- otherwise I’ll  assume you’ve no intention of chasing the  _ Black Hind _ and seeing that bitch Asselin sunk for good.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

Tris was glad to be out of Lavan’s sight, having finished her whiskey (it would be rude not to) and left her old captain to whatever other business she had that needed seeing to.

She knew it was the other woman’s way, to tease her crew good-naturedly, and Regent knew Tris had participated in her share of it when she sailed under Lavan. Still, there was a time and place for it all, and Tris expected the captain to respect at least that much. To speak as freely as she did was one thing, but in the presence of those outside the crew, perhaps was a different matter.

“Is it too soon to ask what in the Regent’s name that was about?” Corzin asked as they made their way along the harbor, having left Lavan and the Mermaid’s Purse behind.

“Captain Vanderzee wants my help hunting pirates,” Tris said, “and yours as well- but that’s your decision.”

“But you don’t have a choice, whether or not you go with her?” Celestia tilted her head to the side. “That’s a bit fucked, darling.”

“I do have a choice,” Tris said, shaking her head. “She just knows what I’ll chose, so there’s no question, what I want to do.”

“And you want to chase the _Hind_.”

“I do.” Her gaze darted to the harbor, to the ships moored there, too big to be brought to the docks properly.

The _Black Hind_ had been one of those ships, before she slunk away in the night, before any port authority could catch her. There was no telling where she was bound, which is why Tris knew it was important to set out as soon as possible, before the _Hind_ had a chance to leave the Viridian Bay for the open sea. If the _Hind_ made it to the sea, the ship was as good as lost, seeing as Tris didn’t have any magic that she could use to find it, and any sort of scrying spell was well beyond what she could afford- not to mention it was useless if Tris wanted the _Hind’s_ location.

“Why?” Scamp asked, pulling Tris’s attention from the harbor. “You said you met the captain before- is it something to do with that?”

A lump rose in Tris’s throat, and she swallowed, trying to clear it. “Yes,” she said, taking a breath to steady herself. “It was a long time ago, but we did meet.”

“I suppose it didn’t go too well then.”

She’d been young- scarcely past twelve- but she remembered the days after crossing the _Hind_ well enough.

Two of the _Blue Wisp’s_ three masts had been taken out by the _Hind’s_ cannons, and she’d lost well over a quarter of her crew- including the ship’s mage and two other officers- in the skirmish, and so the journey back to a safe port had been slow. She remembered the worry that spread through the crew every time a shadow passed overhead or a ship was spotted in the distance, the fervent prayers of a few surviving sailors. She had done what she could with her magic, which was her duty as natural successor of the ship’s mage, and she knew what she did had made a difference, however small her magic had been then. She remembered the cheers of joy and cries praising the Regent and various saints when they made port in Scarroll’s Cove, where they would need to stay for the months that it would take to repair the _Wisp_.

“We lost a lot of crew and several officers as well, and we barely made it to port.”

“The _Hind_ hit that hard, did she?”

Tris nodded, trying to ignore the pricking of tears in the corner of her eyes. “She did.”

“And you lost someone in the fight,” Scamp said, brows knit together with concern.

“I…” The knot in her stomach rose to her throat, and she swallowed, closing her eyes for a moment as she did. Her step faltered, and she stopped. “My mother.”

A hand- Scamp’s- slip into hers and gave a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry.”

Without much thought, Tris returned the squeeze. She couldn’t find words to reply- it had always been a question of hers, what one said in response to such condolences- so she only nodded.

“That’s why you want to find the _Black Hind_ , then,” Celestia said. “To avenge your mother.”

“And every other ship she’s sunk, or sailor she’s slaughtered,” Tris was quick to say, pulling her hand from Scamp’s so she could cross her arms in front of her.

This was the closest she’d been in years to catching the _Hind,_  and she’d be damned if she let it slip through her fingers. The last time she’d been this close, it had been when she sailed under Lavan- they had made port in the _Rose Dawn’s_ home port of Milchetsko, in Meadmere- but the _Black Hind_ had slipped away, bound for the south, towards Orcyria and Suul, though the halfling man she spoke to hadn’t been clear as to which of the two were the ship’s destination.

“You can’t do it on your own,” Scamp said, fiddling with the hem of their cloak. “I have magic that can help, if you want.”

Tris glanced at Corzin and Celestia, half expecting them to contradict Scamp and say no, they couldn’t go to hunt the _Hind_. She almost wanted them to do so- Scamp couldn’t be much older than she’d been when she first encountered the ship, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “If your friends don’t mind.”

“If Scamp’s going, we’re going too,” Celestia said, putting a hand on Scamp’s shoulder. The drow woman met Tris’s gaze. “Your old captain said to meet her at the ship before the tide, didn’t she?”

“That is what she said, yes.” She paused for a moment, then added, “There’s a few things I need before we go, so I was going to sort that before I met Captain Vanderzee this evening.”

Tris was already thinking what she needed to do in advance of meeting Lavan later. She needed incense- for herself and for Scamp- and a bottle or two of cheap whiskey wouldn’t go amiss either. Everything else that she would need for such an endeavor, she was sure she had enough of in her bunk on the _Drake_ , which she knew would be easy enough to retrieve.

“We’ll leave you to that, then,” Corzin said. “I imagine we have our own things to sort, so we’ll meet you at the _Rose Dawn_ when it’s time.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

* * *

 

 

Tris retrieved her things from the _Drake_ first, arranging them in her pack and making sure that everything that needed to be would be protected against sea spray. Once that was sorted, she made her way to the shops.

The incense she bought in an out-of-the-way apothecary run by an elderly human woman who was insistent on calling Tris “child,” and at one point called her by a name that Tris could only assume belonged to a daughter or granddaughter. Tris only smiled, nodded, and handed her the thirty gold she was being charged for the incense, leaving as soon as it was wrapped in oilskin and tucked safely into one of her belt pouches.

The whiskey was more difficult- it took several tries to find a tavern that would sell her full bottles of whiskey, but in the end, she managed to find a place. The halfling woman behind the bar charged what Tris decided was an acceptable sum for two bottles of whiskey, and disappeared to go retrieve the bottles, leaving Tris at the bar.

“Miss Erasmus, is that you?”

Tris’s heart skipped a beat at the familiar voice- it couldn’t be, could it?- and she felt herself freeze.

The speaker was a halfling man with a neat beard, dressed in a work-shirt and vest, and wearing well-polished boots in favor of being barefoot. His voice marked him as Wendish, and Tris could see the spread of a set of strange fractal scars beneath his shirt collar and under the cuff of his right sleeve.

Her stomach rolled. _Sweet Regent._

“Pardon?” she asked, finally finding her voice. “I...I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

The halfling narrowed his eyes at her, and Tris did her best not to shrink under his gaze. “Perhaps I have,” he said, turning his attention to the half-finished pint in front of him. “Thought you were someone I used to sail with, but it might be I’ve had too much to drink.”

“No harm done,” she said, pulling her undersleeves into place and avoiding further eye contact with the halfling until the barkeep brought her the bottles she had requested.

When she left the tavern, she let go of the breath she had been holding, and let herself wonder what Tedison Stilts was doing here. Was he still with the _Blue Wisp_ \- it’d been six years, so he could have signed on with another crew, but she doubted it- and if so, where was the rest of the crew? Whatever the answer, she hoped he would keep it to himself that he’d seen her, or that alcohol would addle him enough and she would become just a mistaken face.

She thought of calling Shriek to her as she went, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly. If anyone from the _Wisp_ were near, it would be a sure tell, and there’d be more than Mr. Stilts to contend with if she was recognized. The sooner she made it to the _Rose Dawn_ , the better it would be- she would be away from the _Wisp_ , and well on her way to seeing the _Black Hind_ at the bottom of the sea, which was what she needed to do now.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your support! It's been great to have such a great readership, and I'm glad people are enjoying Eye of the Storm.  
> Before the chapter kicks off, I need to acknowledge my housemate, Samuel, who has let me use Lavan as a character in this piece. It's been absolutely delightful (and after, what, three chapters? I've finally gotten around to putting that in the notes)  
> Brief disclaimer: I do not know how ships work beyond certain bits, and a lot of what happens later is a very abridged and written-at-two-am naval combat.  
> Enjoy!

As promised, Lavan was waiting at the _Rose Dawn_ , well before the tide was due, overseeing the onloading of supplies for the journey. Corzin, Celestia, and Scamp were nowhere to be seen, and a small part of Tris worried they wouldn’t come, but she pushed the worry aside. It would be some time until they were due to leave, and so worry could wait.

“If it isn’t Bird-Eyes,” she heard a familiar voice call as she drew near, and it wasn’t long before she caught sight of the lanky half elf woman approaching her, a grin spread across her lips. “And I was thinking we’d seen the last of you in Wainwall.”

Tris couldn’t help but return the grin. “It’s good to see you too, Marora,” she said, “and I’m not back for good, just for this trip.”

“She mentioned you’d be coming along, and you’re bringing friends.” Dark amber eyes narrowed, and Marora’s nose wrinkled a little. “And Sacks said one of them’s a Drow- there’s a story you’ll have to tell us once we’re underway.”

“There isn’t much of a story to tell,” Tris said with a shrug. Her gaze drifted to the _Dawn_ , to her crew- some of them familiar, others less so. “While we’re waiting, you could catch me up on what I’ve missed.”

“Well, Avys took over as sailing master when you left,” she said, “and as of last year, I’m the _Rose's_  bosun.”

“What happened to Old Jimothy?”

“Harris hawks, off the Orcyrian coast.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Occupational hazard, it would seem.”

Tris pressed her lips into a tight line. “So it would,” she said. “Anything else new? I don’t see Drax, or Reah.”

“Reah had her calling- you’ll remember that- and left to join the Church. Drax’s living off his share of the last prize we took, decided it was a good time to retire, since the war was over and all.”

“Naturally.” Tris glanced over her shoulder, glad to see the distinct figure of Celestia as the Drow woman drew near, with Scamp and Corzin on either side. “Everything’s in order to sail out, then?”

Marora nodded. “Are those your friends then?”

Tris nodded, and waved her three companions over. “May I introduce Celestia, Corzin, and Scamp,” she said, pointing to each in turn, much as she’d done earlier that day. “This is-”

“I can do my own introduction, Bird-Eyes.” Marora gave a brisk nod. “Marora the Unkillable- pleasure to meet you.”

“Celestia Stardust, nice to meet you.”

“Corzin Horhace.”

“I’m Scamp!”

“Nice to meet you all.” Marora’s gaze lingered on each of them in turn- Tris knew well enough that she was sizing them up, the way she did newcomers or potential prizes- before she gave a nod of assent. “Riri’s who you want to talk to about quartering and shares. Don’t let her scare you- she’s more bark than bite these days, unless you really piss her off.”

“Thank you,” Tris said, taking the lead. “If you’ll tell Captain Vanderzee I’ve arrived, I’ll sort things with Blood-axe.”

Marora rolled her eyes. “Don’t think you’ve gotten out of this one, Bird-Eyes,” she said, giving Tris a playful punch to the shoulder. “Go on. Get your friends settled and once we’re underway, we’ll see what’s to be done with you.”

Tris only nodded, and gestured for her new companions to follow as she led them to where the _Rose Dawn’s_ quartermaster was standing on the main deck where she could oversee everything.

Riri Bloodaxe was a half orc woman of significant stature with short, dark hair, shaved close on both sides, and quick, dark eyes. She wore leather armor that showed signs of more than a few battles over a rust-colored tunic, and at her side hung the battleaxe that earned her her name.

“You’re lucky,” she told Tris as she led them below decks to where the crew was quartered, “there should be room enough for all of you. A few days ago and that might not be the case.”

“Marora said to talk to you about shares.”

“Ordinary sailors’ shares for the four of you, otherwise Lavan might have a mutiny on her hands.”

“Of course.”

“You’re to share duties with Avys, Bird-Eyes. It’ll be good to have you and your bird on our side again- sweet Regent, we’ve missed having that.” Riri glanced at Corzin, Celestia, and Scamp. “For you three, there’s some choice, what you do. We need a powder monkey, a rigger, and ordinary sailor.”

“I’ve been a powder monkey before,” Scamp said. “So I know how to do that.”

“And I can handle rigger duties. Did it before on the _Regret_ , and that isn’t something you easily forget.”

“Which leaves ordinary sailor for you,” Riri said, her gaze flicking over the newcomers in turn. “You’ll be pleased to know the only captain’s daughter on board is Bird-Eyes here, but-”

“Why do you keep calling her Bird-Eyes?” Scamp asked, earning a harsh glare from Riri.

“I’ll tell you later,” Tris promised, which earned a glare of its own from the half-orc.

“But don’t think  you’re entirely free from punishment, should you be caught breaking any rules or disobeying orders. While this isn’t the navy, Lavan does appreciate that some order be kept on her ship.”

“Of course,” Corzin said with a  brisk nod, which was quickly mirrored by both Scamp and Celestia. “You’ll have no trouble from us.”  

“Good.” Riri wiped her brow with the back of her hand and fixed her gaze on Tris. “Introduce Scamp here to G and Harmony once we’re underway.”

“Of course,” Tris said, nodding. “Any word on how long until we catch the _Hind_?”

“Patience, Bird-Eyes. The captain has a lead she wants to chase- should be easy, nothing we cannot do- and then we give proper chase to the ship-burner.”

Tris’s shoulder’s fell. “Very well,” she said, setting her pack at her feet. “Thank you. I can take things from here.”

* * *

 

Once the _Rose Dawn_ was underway and the town of Perbrook well behind them, Tris was sure to introduce Scamp to G, a wiry human who, after Drax’s departure, had assumed the role of master gunner aboard the _Rose_ , and to Harmony, a blue tiefling with stubby bull horns who had been a powder monkey since Tris had joined the crew many years ago.

In her early days with the _Rose_ , Tris had been unsure of Harmony, seeing as he was a tiefling and she had been brought up with a very specific perspective of tieflings. The _Wisp’s_ crew hadn’t included any- the captain wouldn’t stand by it- and so Harmony was the first tiefling Tris had made the acquaintance of. It took time (and a close call with a Tyrian man-of-war) for her to warm up to him, though once she did, she learned that most of the stories that she heard about tieflings were most untrue.  

Harmony was very open about his being a tiefling, and never saw need for a disguise- so when Tris made the introductions, he told Scamp there was no need to hide while on board. There was some surprise in his eyes when he saw Scamp’s horns, but it quickly quieted as he showed them the lay of things on the narrow gun deck.

Once morning came, Tris called Shriek back to to the plane, acknowledging her familiar’s indignant squawks and chirps with affectionate scratches before she sent her to roost on the mainmast.

“The queen’s in her roost, I see,” Lavan observed, joining Tris on the deck. “You’ll be called upon shortly to use her, if I’m correct.”

“We’re still a day behind the _Hind_ , at least,” Tris said, brows furrowing. “Or is this the lead Blood-axe mentioned?”

A grin spread across Lavan’s lips, reminding Tris of a fox who’d caught sight of a lonely hen. “There’s a Wendish merchant ship that’s left Perbrook not long after us- morning tide instead of evening- and it would be a good test of skill for the crew, before we cross with the _Hind_. Should be easy pickings.”

The furrow in Tris’s brow deepened. “Pardon?”

Lavan’s grin widened. “Oh, forgive me,” she said. “We’re pirates now, Alnes. Merchant sailing isn’t as profitable, nor is it as fun.”

“Oh.” Tris took a breath, and glanced along the length of the _Rose Dawn’s_ main deck. “I see.”

“Don’t act surprised dear.” Lavan clapped her gently on the shoulder. “Besides, we’re at least pirates with honor- they do exist, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.” A lie, but she was without any real options. “Please excuse me, captain. I should go help Avys.”

* * *

 

“Sails spotted to stern, Wendish colors!”

As soon as Mr. Sacks raised the cry, the deck of the _Rose Dawn_ became a flurry of activity. It was familiar enough that Tris was able to keep her bearings as she made her way to the stern, a spyglass she’d borrowed from Avys in hand.

The vessel was far away- it would be another few hours before she would be within range- but even from this distance, Tris could pick out the sharp bow and twin masts, as well as the Wendish colors that flew in the steady wind. It was no match in speed to the _Rose Dawn_ \- few ships were, though there was no telling about guns. The _Rose_ sported eight carronades, and, if it came to it, several capable fighters. If this was the merchant ship Lavan hoped it was, then it would be easy pickings for sure.

Once the vessel drew closer, she knew it would fall to her to send Shriek towards the ship to serve as a scout of sorts- with enough concentration, Tris would be able to stretch the limits of the spell for a brief period of time before she needed to recall her familiar. Until then, she kept a steady watch on the Wendish ship, magic prickling excitedly along her skin.

It’d been a while since she’d last taken a prize- the _Drake_ had stopped as soon as peace was declared, taking on jobs that were more within the law- and while she didn’t approve of Lavan’s turn to piracy (it was rotten work, not to mention more likely than not to end one in the gallows), she couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit of excitement at it all.

“Bird-Eyes, if you would, please,” Avys called, taking the spyglass from Tris. “Let’s see what we’re up against.”

Tris only nodded and called Shriek to her, merging her vision with the bird’s as she left her perch and took to the sky.

The thread between them was pulled tight as Tris-as-Shriek soared overhead, riding a wind-current towards the Wendish ship, which Tris recognized once Shriek was closer as a snauw. She circled around the main mast, careful not to get tangled in the rigging, before circling down towards the snow-mast and stern, where a human man in a dark blue frock-coat with a saber at his side and dark hair pulled into a neat horse-tail- the captain, most likely- stood directing the rest of the crew with  all the authority of a naval officer.

 _Sweet Regent and all the saints_.

Her grip on the magic faltered, but Tris forced herself to remain focused, even as the captain sighted Shriek, just as Tris directed the bird to wheel away. Already, she knew she’d sustained the magic for too long- the dull throb at the back of her head was enough to tell her that- but she gave one last push in order to count the guns, so the _Rose_ would know what it was up against. If  she was correct, there would be 10, but it was better to be safe rather than sorry, so she didn’t release her hold on Shriek until she was sure.

There was a mug already in her hand when she returned to the deck of the _Rose_ , and she took a long sip of whatever was in there- rum, or something similarly strong- before relaying what she’d seen to Lavan and Avys.

“She’s a Wendish snauw- not as fast as us, but close enough- and she has ten carronades, if not heavy cannons,” she said, finishing off the contents of the mug and setting it aside. “Crew’s large, might put up a bit of a fight.”

Lavan nodded. “If she wants a fight, I’m sure we can oblige her that,” she said. “It’ll be a good way to get a measure of your friends, don’t you think, Bird-Eyes?”

“Indeed,” Tris said, biting her lip as her stomach lurched- not from the roll of the sea, but from the memory of the captain’s face. “I can try and drive the winds.”

“No need, Alnes. It’s favorable enough, and you’ll need your strength when the time comes.”

Tris only nodded, and let her gaze dart to the main deck, where she spotted Celestia alongside Marora and a halfling sailor- probably one of the Goodbarrel sisters- and then, in the rigging, she spotted Corzin. Scamp would be on the gun-deck, in good company with Harmony and G.

Once the distance between the _Rose_ and her prize was closed, the fight would start with the cannons, and then would come the boarding. The Wendish captain was a soldier- Tris knew that well enough- and would give them a good fight, but Tris knew Lavan wouldn’t kill him. She’d let him live- taking the prize was all she was after, and would only kill in defense of herself or her crew- and for that, Tris was thankful.

The hours dragged on, and it wasn’t much longer until the first volley of cannon-fire was exchanged. By then, the wind had picked up, driving the two ships together much more quickly than Lavan had perhaps planned. Another volley, and a cheer ran along the deck of the Rose as a cannonball struck the snow-mast.

The Wendish ship was well in view now, slowed by the loss of a mast, and Tris could see the glint of blades being drawn- several of the _Rose’s_ crew were already brandishing weapons themselves- in anticipation of what was to follow. Tris could see the vessel’s name as well, and her stomach clenched as she read the name on the side, familiar even after all this time.

“Prepare to board!”

Riri’s call was met with another cheer, and Tris scrambled from her position at the stern to be between Celestia and Marora, swallowing the bile in her throat as she picked her way through the crowd. She poofed Shriek away- should have done so sooner, before the cannonfire began- and flexed her fingers, as if that would dissipate the prickling feeling that ran down her arms to the center of her palms.

She glanced over at Celestia, and swore for a moment that she saw a flash of rainbow- like a silver-sided fish in water- in her hair as the drow woman gave her a wink. Tris felt something settle in her bones, extra strength, perhaps, as she steeled herself to go over the side.

Down the line, she caught sight of Corzin, and then, towards the bow, Lavan, who struck an impressive figure against the pale grey sky. Scamp was still with the cannons, though Tris imagined they would remain there for only a little while longer,  judging from the pace of things.

“Ms. Alnes, some wind, if you would.”

Tris gave a brief nod and extended her magic towards the wind, winding it in such a way as to bring the two ships together in a way that would be favorable to the _Rose_.

“Enough.”  Lavan held up her hand, and Tris released the wind from her grip. The captain turned to the rest of the crew. “On my signal.”

A stillness fell over the sailors as the _Rose_ drew near, though that moment lasted a second before it erupted in a rain of hooks that grabbed the _Wisp_ by her gunwales and a gangplank was lowered, allowing the _Rose’s_ crew to pour over the side. Any chance of a peaceful surrender was gone the moment one of the sailors charged Lavan and Riri.

Tris hung back, watching as Lavan materialized a blade of jagged ice and hurled it at a group of sailors who had decided to charge her- their mistake, as the blade hit one and cast frozen shards into the others- and a set of glyphs flashed across the captain's throat. She caught sight of Corzin, wielding two scimitars as he faced off against a halfling woman Tris knew to be the _Wisp’s_ bosun, holding his own well enough.

 _No time for that now_ , she thought, already begging the Regent’s forgiveness as she made her way across the gangplank, magic burning familiar tracks down her arms to her fingertips, where she felt it settle. She caught sight of Celestia, surrounded by sailors- two of them armed with shortswords and one with a belaying pin-, and directed her magic to fill the space between them.

The feeling of pent-up magic  disappeared as her power was given direction, and she watched two of the three duck and cover their ears, dropping their weapons. There was a quiet rumble of thunder, and she watched a nearby sailor’s step falter.

Once her magic was revealed, she knew she wouldn’t stand much of a chance, and it was only a matter of time before the captain realized who she was, but in the meantime, she would do what she could.

With her free hand, she pulled her knife from her skirt pocket, ready to strike at any enemy who came near. She could feel the tempest-stone burning against her skin, reacting to the magic that she now willingly called upon.

A glance towards the stern confirmed what she had assumed to be true, that the captain was somewhere in the fray, no doubt looking to engage Riri or Lavan and force a retreat. She took a moment as she swung around to send a curl of frigid air at a halfling woman to see if she could spot the distinct cloth and braid of the captain’s frock coat, but to no avail. She caught the arrival of Scamp and Harmony to the fray, and watched Scamp throw a bolt of fire at an enemy sailor.

The fight continued like this for a while- Tris should have expected this, seeing as most merchant ships would expect to be boarded by pirates or privateers- and Tris had fallen into the steady rhythm of switching between her knife and the curl of magic frost, the knot in her stomach gone until a voice rose above the others.

“Tristana!”

She turned to find the voice’s source, and the halfling man who she’d been engaged with (who bore some resemblance to Tedison Stilts, minus the distinguishing scar, so perhaps a cousin) took her distraction as an opportunity to catch her across the front with his blade. It didn’t hurt at first, though as everything caught up, she became acutely aware of the pain, and she did her best to swallow it.

She knew who’d spoken- only one person called her that anymore, and he was there- but she almost couldn’t bring herself to look.

Once more, bile rose in her throat, and she thought she might be sick.

She was going to need a drink when this was over, assuming they made it out in one piece.

This wasn’t what she wanted. It was supposed to be an easy prize, not a full scale fight, and her father, of all people, was not supposed to be present.

Dear Regent, what did he think? Had he even seen her was perhaps the first question, though she assumed he had. It was bad enough she...and worse still that she’d gone and done this.

Maybe what they said about sorcerers was true, that they all went mad with the power given to them and turned into wicked souls beyond saving, or became the tools of wicked souls. Perhaps she was doomed to become a wicked soul, then, and all her attempts to use her gift for good and for the benefit of others was for nothing.

She felt a hand slip into hers, and glanced down to see Scamp standing beside her. “Thank you,” she said, forcing herself to take a breath as a gunshot rang  through the air, and the fighting stopped.

“It’s okay, you know,” they said, already leading Tris away from the remaining ranks of the _Blue Wisp’s_ sailors, back towards the _Rose Dawn_. What was okay, they didn’t clarify, and Tris didn’t ask for any clarification on the matter.

As she and Scamp made their retreat, Tris stole one last look at the _Wisp’s_ crew, counting Tedison Stilts among those still standing who had been corralled by Riri and Marora around the mainmast. She caught the eye of the captain as well, and saw there the disappointment and shame she had never known from him before, but she saw as well, grief, and she had to look away. It was already tempting to beg his forgiveness- even in front of Lavan and her crew- though she was unsure if she would receive it from him, after everything between them, and so she broke eye contact before the idea could take root, and let Scamp lead her back to the relative safety of the _Rose Dawn_.

She didn’t speak as she uncorked one of the bottles she’d purchased in Perbrook and took a long swig of whiskey, relying on that to settle her magic and distract her from the on-off desire of her stomach to empty its contents- a desire she knew would pass, given some time. She untied the ribbon holding her braid together and redid the style with shaking hands, unpicking and redoing it twice before she was satisfied.

She could hear Riri barking orders, and the sound of crates being moved into the  _Rose_ from the _Wisp's_   hold, which she knew to be deep, though narrow. They wouldn't take on too much of the prize, less they compromise their speed, but Tris couldn't find the energy to be concerned with that at present.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: This chapter contains mention of and some light drug use

The success of any prize was usually met on the _Rose Dawn_ with a celebration, and that evening was no exception. Once the crates of the _Wisp’s_ cargo had been placed in the hold and any injuries seen to by the crew’s surgeon, Lavan ordered that everyone receive extra rum rations for their earlier effort. It wasn’t much longer until the deck was filled with the sounds of revelry, of shanties and of various crewmembers recounting tales from the recent skirmish and those past.

Harmony had hoisted Scamp onto his shoulder and was parading them around the deck- not unusual, seeing as Scamp was the youngest and this was their first prize aboard the _Rose_. What was unusual, however, were the bright butterflies and petals that materialized around them, the same bright pink as their skin, though this only seemed to delight the crew. Tris caught sight of Celestia, in the company of Caitlin Goodbarrel and Tasla Snowore as the two sailors started to lead the company in a rousing chorus of “A Drop of Grenville’s Blood.” She caught a few lines, and couldn’t help but give a small grin as she recognized the lines they’d added for the _Rose’s_ crew.

“ _Oh, a tiefling with the cannons wouldn’t do us any harm,_ _  
_ _A tiefling with the cannons wouldn’t do us any harm_.”

Marora grabbed Tris by the waist, grinning as she sang. There was a cut above her eye, and her lip was split, but her step was still light as she spun Tris in a tight circle on the deck. “It’s good to have you back, Bird-Eyes,” she said. “Forgot how much of a blessing you and your bird are- and your friends aren’t half-bad either.

“Glad you think so,” Tris said, leaning into Marora’s touch- well against her better judgement, perhaps. “You’re still sharp.”

“And you haven’t gone soft.” Marora gave her a solid clap on the back. “You’re still all proper, but it’s part of your charm, Bird-Eyes.”

Tris could only shrug, unsure of what she was supposed to say to such a thing, and watched as Marora left her to go join the smaller crew members, who were taking turns climbing to the end of the bowsprit.

She caught sight of Lavan, who was mingling with the crew, grinning as someone struck up the verse of “a captain overboard wouldn’t do us any harm.” She’d taken off her armor once they cut the _Wisp_ loose, and Tris knew without having to look that the glyphs at her throat had long since faded. The captain was noticeably more sober than the rest of the crew, but Tris knew well enough to know that was her way- someone had to keep a level head on board, and Regent knew it wasn’t Tris.

Tris made her way down to the crew’s quarters, leaving the celebration behind her. She rifled through her pack, finding what she wanted before heading for the hold, where she knew she’d have some peace.

The whiskey earlier had only done so much to quiet her magic or settle her nerves, and Tris found it difficult to shake the tightness that gripped her chest as her father had called her name. She’d held it together in the face of Lavan and the crew of the _Rose_ , long enough that they wouldn't notice her slipping off to the hold.

Once she was alone, she shed her undersleeves, followed by her capelet, folded them over once, and set them on a crate beside her. She pulled a slender pipe from her and used her magic to light it, watching as a shred of her own lightning ran through the fractal scars on her arm, ending in a tiny flame.

It was a bad habit, opium, and she knew it could be dangerous, if she wasn’t careful. She’d heard stories about those who were so securely in its hold, they couldn’t sleep without it, and stories still of those who died of it, but it helped settle her nerves when Shriek wasn’t there to be a steady weight on her shoulder, or when whiskey couldn’t quiet her magic enough.

“Captain Vanderzee’s looking for you.”

Tris glanced towards the sound of Corzin’s voice, and found the halfling man standing at the entrance to the hold. “I doubt it,” she said, using her magic to extinguish the pipe before setting it aside, ignoring the flush of shame across her cheeks as she did. “We took a prize- she’ll be up there celebrating with the rest of the crew.”

“And you don’t want to celebrate with them?”

“I...I don’t care for drinking,” she said, glancing over Corzin’s shoulder, half-afraid someone else would come through and find her. “I just wanted some quiet after the fight.”

Corzin pressed his lips into a tight line. “I didn’t see you during the fight.”

“I’m not a coward.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you were. Ships’ mages tend to stay out of things, if they can, though you seem experienced enough to know that.”

“I’d hope so,” Tris said. “I’ve been a ship’s mage since I was Scamp’s age- younger, perhaps. I’ve had a lot of time to practice.”

“Have you served with a lot of crews then?”

Tris nodded. “I have,” she said, brow furrowing. “What do you want, Mr. Horhace?”

Finding a seat on one of the smaller crates, Corzin met Tris’s gaze and  said, “I saw you leave the _Wisp_ before the prize was counted.”

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Scamp said you froze up when you went over the side.” He paused, then, “Was the _Wisp_ one of the ships you served on?”

“My father’s.” Tris hesitated. “My father is the captain of the _Blue Wisp._ ”

“Ah.”

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear before folding her hands in her lap. She drew a breath, trying to dispel the nausea that curled in her stomach. “He saw me.”

Perhaps it was inevitable, that one day her past would catch up to her, but she had been so careful, she hadn’t thought it would be this soon. It wasn’t supposed to be. She thought she’d have more time- there were plenty of ships in the sea, and more than enough ports. Admittedly, she didn’t remember that much of her arithmetic lessons, but she could recall enough to know that the likelihood of crossing course with her father and the _Blue Wisp_ was incredibly slim.

“Pardon?”

“He’s not supposed to be able to find me,” she said, shaking her head. “The woman at Peder’s March said he wouldn’t be able to find me.”

“Oh Regent,” Corzin muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Right. Please tell me this woman wasn’t named Olga Gristlegums.”

Tris furrowed her brow, thinking. “It was six years ago, but I do believe that was her name, yes,” she said, nodding. “It was after I left my father's ship, and she said she would help me.”

“What did you give her?” There was a seriousness in Corzin’s voice as he spoke, and the set of his brow reminded her of her father, how he would address a sailor who had committed some wrong aboard the ship.

Tris couldn’t help but shrink away the slightest bit. “I didn’t give her anything,” she said. “She asked  about my mother’s family.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I told her I didn’t know much.” Her magic twitched, a quick flash of lightning that ran down her arm from her elbow, wrapping around her palm, stinging as it went. She took a breath, doing her best to rein in her magic- there was no room for flyaways here. “Her parents are from the Tyrian States, and her mother has the same gift as I- most of the women in that family do.”

“You never met any of them?”

“Not that I remember well enough,” she said. “We made port in Tyre once, when I was small, and I do remember meeting someone who looked like my mother, though she was an elf, I think. It was long ago, I’m afraid, and I don’t remember much beyond that.”

“Fair enough.” The serious tone was no longer there, but the halfling’s expression remained the same. “Any reason you didn't want him to see you?”

“Because Captain Vanderzee’s a pirate, and...and I can assure you, Mr. Horhace, my father is not one to take kindly to pirates.”

It was far from the truth, but the truth was too complicated a story for the moment, and not something Tris found herself wanting to revisit at present. Regardless, she doubted that she would be welcomed back with open arms; she was hardly a prodigal daughter of any sort, especially not after the recent battle. If she were in trouble before- stealing away in the night as soon as the _Wisp_ made port in Peder’s March, never mind what came before- it would be much worse for her now that he’d seen her in the company of pirates.

“I suppose you have a point, then.”

Tris drew a deep breath, her gaze flickering to the pipe that lay beside her, mostly forgotten since Corzin’s arrival. “Mr. Horhace, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s getting rather late, I’m afraid, and I believe I have the dawn shift,” she said, collecting her pipe and slipping it into the pocket of her skirt. She could feel Corzin’s eyes on her as she pulled her undersleeves back on, hiding the fractal scars beneath grey wool.

Corzin gave her a brisk nod. “Goodnight, Tris.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Horhace,” she said, and with that, she left the hold, heading for her quarters, leaving Corzin behind.

Once she’d made it to the crew quarters, she pulled on the thread tying her to Shriek, calling her familiar to her side.

The osprey found a roost in the low beams of the cabin, chirping and trilling irritably as Tris stowed her things.

“I know, I know,” Tris said, giving her head a small shake. “I didn’t want to risk anything happening, not when I can only bring you back so many times.”

Shriek fluffed up her feathers, then shook them smooth, watching intently as Tris pulled salt water from her clothes with her magic.

Once Tris had settled herself in the hammock, the osprey was more than happy to descend from the beam and nestle herself atop Tris’s body- something much more comfortable for Tris when Shriek’s shape was that of a cat, but she didn’t mind. The weight was comforting, in the same way the rock of the boat was comforting, or how her mother’s singing had comforted her as a child, soothing her and carrying her towards sleep once more.


	10. Chapter 10

Tris woke at dawn from restless dreams whose exact nature evaded her as she rebraided her hair and pulled on her boots. She recalled a shape below the water- a leviathan creature, its form threaded through with lightning- and the shrill cries of troubled seabirds overhead, but nothing more clear than that.

It didn’t matter, what she dreamed, because in the end, dreams meant nothing. She knew there were people who could interpret dreams, and her mother had spoken of people who could walk between the worlds of waking and dreaming as easily as she stepped from land to sea. Whether or not those were stories or the truth, Tris was unsure, but found no need to explore further.

Instead, her attention went to the horizon, where the sun had already begun to rise, flooding the water’s surface with orange-gold light. A steady wind filled the sails and swept across the deck, carrying the long-familiar tinge of salt with it. In the distance, Tris caught sight of a bank of clouds, dark enough to spell trouble later (and given the season, she wouldn’t be surprised), but there was a fair enough chance they would disperse before the Rose could reach them. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be anything Tris couldn’t handle- she was sure of at least that much.

Satisfied with the present weather conditions, she turned her gaze to the surrounding waters, hoping for a sight of the _Black Hind_ on the skyline. They should be close by now, and they would have been closer, if they hadn’t stopped to hunt the _Wisp_ . In all likelihood, it would take them a few more days to catch the _Hind_ , but that could change if they cleared the mouth of the Viridian Bay ahead of the _Rose_.

A few sailors were on deck as Tris assumed her usual position on the quarterdeck, and they greeted her as she passed, most of them with quiet nods as she went. She let the bond between her and Shriek hang loose, and watched as the osprey dove over the side to pluck a fish from the sea.

Were they not chasing the _Hind_ , perhaps Lavan’s crew would have enjoyed a breakfast of freshly-caught fish, but such a treat would have to wait for the return journey.

As she relieved Caitlin Goodbarrel of her post, Tris let go of any thoughts of the _Hind,_ and turned her mind to the day’s sailing. It would require almost no thought on her part, as the waters of the Viridian Bay were familiar enough that she didn’t need charts- only fair weather and a heading from the captain. She remembered the charts her father kept in his stateroom, how she’d be allowed to take them from their cases and study them, so long as she promised to be careful.

Such days were far behind her, and no longer was she a child of six running about the deck of the _Blue Wisp,_ withAmery not far behind. She was no longer a girl of ten, either, dressed in her best petticoat, sitting beside her mother at a dinner with one of her father’s old friends before the children were herded upstairs by an even-tempered halfling nursemaid to be readied for bed. Those days- and the life they would have led to- however, were no more, and Tris knew it best to leave it there, rather than dwell on the lady she might have been, married into another family like her father’s and living in a house, cut off from the sea.

Taking a breath, Tris cast her mind out towards Shriek, remembering to grip the rail as her senses merged with her familiar’s.

There was no need to adjustment this time, as this was a routine to which she was well-accustomed. As soon as the connection took, Tris-as-Shriek flew to the top of the mainmast, letting out a quick trill to let the dawn-shift riggers know she was passing around them. She did a quick pass of the mainmast, checking that things were in good order- ropes and sails alike- before moving to the next mast and doing the same.

It was a wonderful feeling, to have wind beneath her wings as she let an updraft carry her up and over the fo’c’sle, towards the water’s surface. Below her, she spotted a school of fish, and as their fins broke the surface, she dove to catch one of them. Razor claws closed around the fish as she sank beneath the waves, letting the chilly water close around her for a moment before she pushed herself into the air with her fish.

She could feel the tugging at the back of her mind that told her she was pushing the limits of the magic, so she shook off her feathers and flew towards the Rose Dawn.

Tris-as-Shriek glided towards the deck of the _Rose_ , settling on a rail and taking a moment to just watch the goings-on of the main deck, her prize still grasped firmly in her claws. She spotted the dark-furred form of Jeffry skittering after Tasla Snowore as the dwarven sailor changed positions with a half-elf Tris didn’t recognize. Scamp was not far behind the monkey, and Tris-as-Shriek watched them pause to unwrap a sweet before going to pick Jeffry up and prevent what Tris was sure would become a rather awkward confrontation, as Jeffry seemed rather intent on the warhammer that hung from Tasla’s belt.

She let out a trill and flew over to Scamp, circling their head before alighting to where Tris stood, seeming to watch the goings-on below.

With another breath- just as she’d learned from her mother- Tris separated herself from Shriek, thanking her familiar with a few scritches behind her head.

Shriek trilled happily and clicked her beak before she began tearing into the fish she’d caught, a clear signal to Tris that she wanted to be left on her own after their flight.

“Alright, alright,” Tris said, unable to hold back a grin. “Just don’t make a mess- it’s rude.”

With one last look at her bird to make sure Shriek wouldn’t get fish carcass all over the quarterdeck (it had happened once, and Lavan had been less than pleased, and Tris herself had been mortified), she made her way down to the main deck and over to Scamp.

“You’re up early,” she said, unable to hide the grin as Jeffry skittered up to her and looked up to her with quick dark eyes. “Is something the matter?”

Scamp shook their head. “No...Well, Corzin snores, but that’s not why.”

Tris held back a laugh, but her grin widened. “Once Avys is up, we can start with the spell I promised you. It should be smooth enough sailing that G won’t mind letting me borrow you for the afternoon.”

“Okay!” Scamp fished around in their pocket and produced a sweet- Tris was beginning to wonder how many sweets the child had in their pockets, but bit back the urge to ask- which they then offered to Tris, who shook her head in polite decline. “Was that you flying around with Shriek?”

“I wanted to make sure things were alright in the rigging, and with the sails, and Shriek is the best way to do that,” she said, pressing her lips into a thoughtful line. “When you learn to call a familiar, I can show you some ways to use them as a ship’s mage, if you’d like.”

“What kind of shapes can you give her?”

“Well, she’s usually a sea-bird, but I’ve turned her into a cat more than a few times now- she doesn’t really like that- and she’s been an octopus a few times, which I don’t think she was too pleased with either.”

“Corzin has an octopus. It’s one of those spirit-things, so I’ve never seen it, but it’s there- Celestia’s seen it.”

“I’ll take your word for it, then,” Tris said, nodding. She was well-acquainted with stories of spirits from her childhood, but she’d never met anyone who had a spirit themselves. Her eyes darted back to the quarterdeck- presently unattended, save for Shriek, who was picking bits of fish from her claws- then to Scamp. “I should return to my post, at least until Avys is up.”

***

It was nearing midday when Avys showed up on the quarterdeck to take over from Tris.

The _Rose Dawn_ ’s new sailing master was a blue-scaled dragonborn who stood a good head and a half above Tris. They dressed simply- in a work-shirt that’d lost its original color years ago, plain breeches, and a pair of worn jack-boots- and Tris had noticed the double scars across one cheek, which were new additions to their already impressive collection.

“Overslept,” Avys told Tris before she could think to ask for an explanation (not that she would have dared to do so, even if Avys had missed the first shift-change of the day). “But she’s in good hands, I see.”

“There’s a good wind, so we should be able to make up for the hunt yesterday,” Tris was quick to say. “Everything’s in working order.”

“Good, good.” The dragonborn produced their spyglass and took a moment to inspect the horizon. “Looks like we might be getting some weather later- what do you think?.”

Tris could only nod, lips pressed in a grim line. “I’ve had my eye on it since morning,” she said. “Either we’ll push it along or meet it- it’s too soon yet to tell.”

All throughout her shift, she’d had her eye on the bank of clouds, which were too far beyond the reach of her magic for that to be of use. It struck her as strange, how the dark clouds lingered in place, and didn’t move as storms were wont to do, but it could just as easily be a big storm, spread wide over the sea. They would only know when they met the storm, which she figured would fall anywhere between sundown and dawn if they kept this pace.

“Alright then.” Avys collapsed their spyglass and tucked it away. “I’m sure you’ll hear if you’re needed.”

“No doubt I will.”

Tris took that as her cue to leave Avys to their work, and if her skill was needed, she would undoubtedly be sent for. Her next order of business, however, was to start showing Scamp how to call a familiar, and there were a few things she needed for that.

She’d never taught a spell before, but she remembered her mother’s teachings well enough to make a plan. She gathered her things from her bunk first- her books and the necessary components- before poking her head into Shadow-scream’s makeshift surgery to retrieve a nicely-sized tangle of linen strips from the half-orc. Once she had what she needed, she sought out Scamp, and lead them to the quiet of their berth.

When she had been young, her learning had been done in the seclusion of her father’s stateroom, or in her room at Scaroll’s Cove, but here there was no such luxury, and she would have to make do. Luckily, the majority of other sailors quartered in this cabin were up and working above deck, which meant the two of them would have peace and quiet for a couple of hours at most- more than adequate time for a first lesson.

“What’re the bandages for?” Scamp asked as Tris cleared dust from the floor with Prestidigitation before sitting, legs folded neatly beneath her.

“Sit down, and I’ll show you,” came Tris’s answer as she separated two strips from the tangle and handed one to Scamp.

“I thought you were teaching me magic.” Scamp took the bandage and sat, squirming in place before settling down. “I don’t want to roll bandages.”

“My mother always said that big magic needs to be done with a clear mind.” Tris had already started rolling her linen strip, and her breathing settled into the familiar pattern her mother had taught her many years ago. “She would set me to work fixing sails or doing a simple needlepoint- enough that there was rhythm, but not anything I needed to think about.”

“This isn’t big magic.”

“But it’s new,” Tris pointed out. “When it’s no longer strange, then you won’t need to do this, but it’s a good way to start. If your mind’s clear- especially for this spell- not a lot can go wrong.”

“Can a lot go wrong with this spell?”

Tris shook her head. “No, but I don’t think we’d want to take any chances, would we?”

“I suppose not.”

“Another thing that’s important with big magic is remembering to breathe, so your magic is steady when you cast.” Tris loosened the grip on her magic as she spoke, taking a breath to illustrate her point. Still mindful of the pattern she was demonstrating, she set the bandages down and retrieved her book, which she opened to the Find Familiar spell, then set aside. “Magic like ours can be tricky, can’t it?”

Scamp gave a small nod, but Tris could tell their attention was on the tight roll of linen in their hands. There was a moment when pink eyes darted to her spellbook, then to the book they’d brought with them, before they settled back on the task at hand.

It’d been years since Tris had even thought to revisit her mother’s lessons on working big magic, but the pattern of breathing and doing simple work was still familiar enough to her that she found herself getting lost in it. As she worked, she let go of any worry there was regarding the storm, or the _Blue Wisp_ and her father, and turned her mind to the task at hand. This was the first time she would be teaching magic, and while the spell was simple enough, she wasn’t about to do a poor job of it, not when Scamp was so eager to learn.

She and Scamp sat in silence for what she figured was another hour, by which point the tangle of linen strips had been transformed into a neat(ish) stack of rolled bandages, which Tris would return to Shadow-scream when she and Scamp were finished.

The next step was less hands-on for Tris, as it was simply giving Scamp time to copy over the spell, studying it as they did. Of course Tris would stay and supervise, and if Scamp had any questions, she would be on hand to answer.

It was so different from how Tris had learned, and she felt her heart clench at the thought. She was teaching Scamp as her mother had taught her, though the Regent knew Tris lacked her mother’s skill or knowledge to even be considered qualified for teaching magic. There was a strangeness to it as well, though Tris couldn’t place a finger on why- as she drew a breath to make sure Scamp was focusing on their breathing as they copied the spell into their book with crayon, she decided to push the question away.

“Finished,” Scamp announced, pushing the book across the boards and holding their book so Tris could compare the two. “Do I still have to do the breathing thing?”

“The magic will be easier if you do- trust me,” Tris said, studying Scamp’s spell and nodding her satisfaction. From beside her, she retrieved a small brass dish and a portion of the incense she’d purchased in Perbrook and set it in front of the pink tiefling. “When you cast the spell, you’ll need a brazier of sorts- size doesn’t matter too much- and nice incense, or else the spell won’t work.”

Scamp nodded and pulled the items closer towards them. “Okay,” they said, producing a piece of chalk and beginning to copy the inscriptions for the spell on the boards around Tris’s brazier. Their brow settled into a deep furrow as they worked, pausing only to light the contents of the brazier, filling the cabin with the heady scent of incense.

Tris continued to breathe, letting her mind wander, circling around the question of what Scamp’s familiar would manifest as, even though it was hardly her business.

She knew from brief study that familiars at the initial calling would assume the shape of something familiar to the caster- a childhood pet or favorite animal. There was proof of that in Shriek, who had manifested the shape of a magnificent osprey, which had been her mother’s emblem, when Tris had first called her. The books she’d read on the matter attributed this to the magic following the most natural course for the caster at the initial casting, rather than allow itself to be forcefully directed when it was first cast.

“Tris, look! I did it!”

Tris’s attention darted to Scamp, and at the flurry of colored feathers- mostly red, with yellow and blue- that burst forth from the small brazier. She couldn’t help but grin as she watched the parrot circle around Scamp before settling on one of their curled horns. “Well done, Scamp,” she said, her books forgotten for a moment while she studied the newly-formed familiar.

“His name is Jeff, I think.”

“Starting tomorrow, I can show you ways to use Jeff, if you want,” Tris offered. “I’ll have to talk to Captain Vanderzee about letting us have time for lessons, but I’m sure something can be arranged.”

“Sounds like fun- and then I can show you how to make horses!”

Tris grinned. “I would like that very much.”

“We don’t have to do any of that breathing stuff that you made me do, though.”

“If you say so.”

As delightful as it was, the idea of learning a new spell, Tris knew that it would likely have to wait until they’d caught the _Black Hind_ , which- given their current speed and heading- could be anytime in the next two days, Regent willing. Still, she wouldn’t spoil the moment with that grim reality.

“Why don’t you introduce your friends to Jeff?” she suggested. “I’m sure they’d love to see what you learned.”

“Celestia will have a heart attack- Jeff looks a lot like the parrot she exploded in Crosswater.”

Tris furrowed her brow. “Pardon?”

Scamp shrugged. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“I can tell you later if you like, or Corzin can tell it. He’s really good at telling stories.”

“Perhaps later, or sometime tomorrow.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Arachne’s fangs!” Celestia’s voice carried across the deck of the _Rose_ , earning a few looks from the sailors on duty. “Scamp darling, where the _fuck_ did that bird come from?”

“I made him!” came the pink tiefling’s answer. “His name is Jeff.”

The parrot circled Celestia one more time and let out an indignant squawk before perching on Scamp’s horn, which seemed to be his preferred roost. 

Tris grinned as she watched this play out from the quarterdeck. She and Scamp had been practicing since midday with Jeff, directing the brilliantly-feathered familiar up and down the deck, around the main-mast and down around the bowsprit. 

It hadn’t taken Scamp long to get the hang of things, which Tris found incredible. It’d taken her days, if not weeks, to figure out how to manipulate the thread between her and Shriek, and Scamp had taken to it in a handful of hours with Jeff. She was admittedly envious of Scamp and of how comfortable they were with their magic- she didn’t see any signs of discomfort, any signs of trying to rein in their power, which Tris supposed was just as wild and volatile as her own. 

“Bird-Eyes, tell me about that storm there, why don’t you?” Lavan lowered her spyglass for a moment, eyes watching the horizon, where the storm still hovered. “I don’t like the look of it.”

“It’s been there since dawn,” Tris said, brow furrowed. “I’ve never seen a storm hold shape like that before.”

Lavan pressed her lips together, and narrowed her eyes. She stayed like this for a moment, then shrugged. “Nothing we can do until we meet it,” she said, and her gaze darted to Tris. “Unless you think otherwise?”

Tris shook her head. “We’re too far away for me to work magic on it, if that’s what you’re asking, Captain.” 

“Even for your bird to see?”

“I could try, but I can only look so far with her to begin with.” The day after using Shriek to scout a prize was always difficult, and while Tris felt a little better than usual, she knew that overextending her magic could have severe consequences if she wasn’t careful. “I have suspicions, but I would need to check my books to know for sure.”

“You and your books, Bird-Eyes. You would’ve made a fine student at a university, that’s for sure.”

Tris didn’t reply- there wasn’t much she could say in response, so why speak? 

She had considered university after she left the _Wisp_ , when she would’ve been the right age to begin study in Crosswater, but the notion had been quickly dismissed. University would teach her control, and how to channel her magic into useful spells, but she had no means of paying, nor could she attend under her father’s name, for surely he would hear of her from his friends in the city. Perhaps she would’ve been able to get in on talent alone- she knew it was possible, with the right circumstances- but it wasn’t worth the risk, so she’d joined the first crew that would take her from Peder’s March to Werrick’s Watch (a Suulian merchant ship called the _Hirondelle_ , upon which there was another passenger, who she remembered as being rather strikingly-dressed, but recalled little else) and that was where she met Lavan. 

“I’m of more use at sea than in a library,” she finally said. “There isn’t much call for weather-witches inland.”

“If you want to be of more use, Bird-Eyes, I hope you’ve polished your quarterstaff fighting- we might need it when we catch the _Hind_.” Lavan gave her a once-over. “How about a little friendly sparring. No magic, just you and me, like old times.”

“All due respect, Captain, but I don’t think it’s a good idea, not with the storm and-” 

“No buts, Alnes. I’ll get staves from Riri, and meet you on the main deck in half an hour. I’m sure the crew’ll appreciate the entertainment.”

“Very well.” Tris watched as Lavan left the quarterdeck, waiting until the captain was out of sight to smooth the creases in her skirt. Her stomach rolled at the prospect of a sparring match with the half-elf woman, but Lavan did have a point, that a dagger would only do her so much good if it came to a fight with the crew of the _Hind_.

Her magic would serve her well enough, but even she was sensible enough to know that it could only stretch so far, and to rely on one thing entirely was a fool’s mistake.

 

***

The crew was gathered around Tris and Lavan, creating a makeshift ring that gave them just enough space to move about on either side. Out of the corner of one eye, Tris saw Riri, who was overseeing the fight, standing alongside Shadow-Scream, who watched the two with a careful eye, ready to step in if an accident happened. On her other side, she caught the bright pink of Scamp next to the flash of silver that she could only assume to be Celestia. Corzin was less obvious than his companions, but Tris caught sight of him nonetheless, standing near Marora, who stood with her arms crossed in front of her. 

She and Lavan stood opposite each other, each holding their quarterstaff as if it were no more than a walking-stick as they exchanged a polite nod and settled back into a ready stance. 

Tris drew a deep breath before she lunged with her staff, catching Lavan close to her fingers before pulling back and preparing for Lavan’s retaliation.

Lavan returned the blow, which Tris barely managed to parry without being forced to step back a few paces towards the ring of sailors.

The half elf woman grinned. “Not a bad start, Alnes,” she said, and took another swing, which connected solidly with Tris’s hip.

For a moment, she curled in on herself, biting back curses. _Come on. Up you go_. She heard someone- Celestia- give a cheer, and the heavy pain subsided and she was able to steady herself, enough that she could get her bearings and lash out at Lavan, trying to do what the captain had done to her and drive her back. 

Lavan caught the blow and was quick to deliver one of her own, which rapped Tris across the knuckles as she struggled to block it in time. 

Tris let out a quiet hiss at the contact- she’d forgotten how much a well-placed blow could hurt, regardless of where it hit- but readied herself nonetheless. She took a few careful steps to the side, holding her quarterstaff so that she could bring it about to strike if Lavan tried anything. As she moved, her attention was focused on Lavan, waiting for even a momentary drop in the captain’s guard to strike. 

The moment came, and Tris lunged, and brought the blow down on Lavan’s shoulder, careful not to bring the staff down with too much force (Blood-scream would kill her if she broke any bones while sparring, she was sure of it). 

“St. Deborah’s tits.” Lavan staggered under the blow, but once she regained her bearings, a grin spread  across her lips, and she tossed back her head. “That’s more like it. Come on, don’t be shy.”

For the next few minutes, they traded blows, moving in a bit of a half-circle as they went. Lavan caught Tris in the legs several times, but she was always sure to return the favor, and they kept moving. The air around them rang with the sound of wood striking wood as they held each other at bay. The crew cheered them on, most of them cheering for their captain, while a few- including Marora,  Harmony, Celestia, Scamp, and Corzin- cheered for Tris. 

Despite the breeze, sweat beaded on both Tris and Lavan’s foreheads, and Tris- years out of practice- found herself gasping for breath as they struck and parried. The fight would go on until one of them was worn out and admitted defeat, as had been the rule on board  the _Rose_ for any kind of fight.  

Tris swung her staff around to strike Lavan, and missed, which left an open space for Lavan to attack that Tris didn’t notice until too late. When the blow hit, Tris forced herself to grin, and swung again, this time managing to check Lavan in the hip before she withdrew. 

Lavan made as if to return the blow exactly, but Tris caught her just in time, breathing heavily at the momentary standstill. “A bit rusty, but not too bad,” she said, before making repeated lunges for Tris’s middle with the tip of the staff. 

Two of the blows connected, but Tris was able to move aside in time so that the third missed, and the momentum almost took Lavan with it on the follow-through. 

 _Sweet Regent_ , Tris thought. If  one thing was for certain, it was that she would be sporting a nice collection of bruises come morning. She could see Lavan beginning to tire, which perhaps meant the fight would be over soon. She couldn’t go for much longer, that much was for certain.

With a breath to steady herself, Tris charged, throwing her full strength behind her next strike as she aimed high, with the intention to drive Lavan back, then strike hard and fast at her knees. She could feel her body protesting- protesting from exertion as much as from pain- as the first blow landed and she steeled herself against the half-elf woman’s effort to remain in place and every inch of her body called for her to call for an end to the fight there. 

“Come on Tris!” 

“Let’s see you finish her, Lavan.”

“I’ve got five silver riding on this Bird-Eyes, don’t screw up.”

She was eye to eye with Lavan, each woman holding their own against the other for what seemed like an eternity before Tris noticed a ripple across Lavan’s skin. For a split second, tan skin became pale, paler than the moon on the clearest night of the year, and blue eyes became white, so white they seemed to glow. 

Her gut coiled into a knot, and she felt the need to turn away and make the sign of the Regent against...against Lavan, who for a moment was replaced with a creature stranger than any tiefling Tris had encountered. 

She blinked, and the strange creature was gone, leaving Lavan as Tris knew her in the same place.

Lavan took Tris’s hesitation as an opportunity to attack, shoving Tris back and striking her solidly in the side with more force than Tris anticipated. She struck again, and Tris, still perplexed by the brief vision of not-Lavan-but-also-Lavan was too slow to parry, resulting in a solid blow below her ribs.

Any air in Tris’s lungs left her as the blow landed, and she stepped to the side, trying to get out of Lavan’s way. She was half-tempted to call the fight then and there, but she couldn’t find breath for  the words. Pain radiated from where Lavan had landed her more solid blows, and Tris found herself struggling to breathe, her chest wound tight with pain. 

“And Lavan’s the winner!” She heard Riri call, followed by a rousing cheer from the rest of the crew. 

Tris nodded, still trying to force air into her lungs. Letting the staff fall from her hands, she made the sign of the Regent with a shaking hand and stepped back, ready to retreat to her bunk. Instead, she made her way over to the rail, and leaned over the side just enough to catch a breeze. 

“Are you okay?” Scamp asked, appearing at Tris’s side, brow furrowed in concern. “She hit you pretty hard.”

Still unable to give breath to words, Tris nodded. She could feel anxiety creeping at the edge of her thoughts as she recalled the shape Lavan had taken on towards the end of the fight, but she forced her mind away from that, and towards breathing. 

The constricting feeling would pass- this wasn’t the first time she’d experienced it- and so would the panic, if only she remembered to breathe. It helped to find the pattern her mother had taught her, and that she in turn had taught to Scamp that morning. She followed the pattern of breathing  and counting until she felt the tension in her chest release. 

“Did you see that?” she asked once breath returned to her. “Lavan, she-” 

“Easy does it,” Corzin advised. “Just get your breath back for now.”

“It was fucking weird,” Celestia muttered. “Is she a tiefling? Scamp, is that a tiefling thing?”

“I don’t know. She has magic, though.”

Tris shook her head. “I know she has magic, but that wasn’t it,” she said. “I’ve never seen her do that before, so it’s either something else, or something new altogether.”

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t half-elf, that’s for certain.” Corzin pressed his lips together, thinking, then shook his head. “Whatever she is, we can deal with once we’ve caught this ship of yours, Tris.”

“Hopefully that will be sooner, rather than later,” Tris said. “We’re two days from the mouth of the bay, and by then, we might lose her.”

“Assuming that storm hasn’t gotten her first,” Celestia pointed out.

“I don’t like the look of it,” Corzin said. “What do you think?”

“Storms don’t just come out of nowhere, nor do they stay in one spot like that one is doing- at least, not usually.” Tris wiped her brow with her shirt-sleeve (very unladylike of her, perhaps), and turned her face to a passing breeze. “We’ll meet it after nightfall at this rate, and then we’ll see. I’ve brought a ship through storms before, so there shouldn’t be too much difficulty.”

“I can help if you need it,” Scamp offered. “It can’t be that hard, right?”

“Thank you Scamp.”

“And if there’s anything we can do, please tell us. Even if it’s just holding ropes or things.”

Tris nodded.  “I will, yes,” she said, her mind already flying to what she needed to do next, which was probably retrieve a tin of salve from Shadow-Scream, before the inevitable bruises started causing her more trouble. “Thank you, all of you. I’m sorry you were pulled into this on my account- serves me right, introducing you to Captain Vanderzee as my friends.”

“We are your friends, darling.”

“You met me in a tavern, after I struck a man with lightning, and then I almost burnt a ship in harbor.”

“You stood up for Scamp, and not a lot of folks would do that for a tiefling.”

“I didn’t know they were a tiefling.” She took a breath. “That’s...that’s not what I meant. Mr Hutchenson is a bully, and I don’t like bullies.”

“You didn’t throw rocks when you found out I am a tiefling,” Scamp offered. “And you showed me how to do magic. No one’s really taught me magic before. I think you’re a friend.”

Tris smiled. “I suppose we are friends, Scamp,” she said. “And Mr. Horhace, and Miss Stardust-”

“Celestia, darling, please.”

“And Celestia. I suppose you are my friends then.”

  



	12. Chapter 12

“So what happened just then was beyond weird, right? It’s not just another weird surface thing that everyone knows about?” 

“It’s not a weird surface thing,” Corzin said, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen anything like it.”

“Did you know Captain Vanderzee was...weird?” Scamp asked.

Without looking up from her book, Tris shook her head. “That’s the first time I’ve seen it, if she is, but I only sailed with her for three years.”

“So do you think the crew who’ve sailed with her longer would know?” 

“I wouldn’t go asking them about it, if I were you.” Tris bit her lip, turning her attention to the book she had open in her lap, in hopes that her mother’s notes would yield some kind of answer, or even a hint about what the _Rose_ might encounter. 

When Tris had taken over as ship’s mage on board the _Blue Wisp_ , she’d inherited her mother’s notebook, a simple, leather-bound volume with “Property of Lydia Alnes” written in elegant script on the inside cover. It was a wonder how the pages remained intact, though Tris suspected a small (and likely costly) enchantment, similar to the one that kept her father’s logbooks and ledgers from being affected by the elements. In it were observations of the weather and seasonal patterns, brief passages detailing specific instances that must of caught her attention in one way or another throughout her travels, and notes on how to manipulate the winds. There were also several sketches of the Jovan coastline, where some towns had been circled and marked with a date, most of which were well before Tris had been born. These posed a great mystery to Tris, who, in the absence of further notes, didn’t have any way of deriving meaning from towns and dates.

There was nothing in her mother’s book about creatures like what Tris had seen Lavan shift into. The closest thing she could find was a short entry from when the _Wisp_ docked on the Meadmerish coast that mentioned a “curiously pale child, with a fey strangeness about her, whose features seemed to shift” that Lydia had encountered in a shop. There was no mention of what the child’s race was, nor was there further mention of the child. 

That would have to wait for another day, however, as Tris was more concerned with discerning the nature of the storm that drew closer with every moment. She knew of storms that gathered near the coast and struck the land, wreaking indiscriminate havoc upon the towns there, but they were far from the coast, so she knew she could safely rule that out. The storm being natural was the next idea to go- no storm held in place for a full day, nor would there be any cause for a storm of that size to be inside the bay at this time of the year- which only left one possibility remaining. 

“It’s some kind of magic,” she said, setting her mother’s book aside, still open to one of the hand-drawn maps- this one of the north Wendish coast. 

“What’s magic, darling?”

“The storm.” Tris furrowed her brow. “We’re too far from the coast for it to be one of those coastal storms that come in and wipe out everything.” 

“You mean a kraken,” Corzin said, a shadow passing across his features for a moment.

Tris hesitated, lips pressed together in thought. “I suppose,” she said, though she wasn’t sure, really. “The storm is magical. It’s the only explanation as to why it’s been able to hold its shape for so long, or why it’s inside the bay this time of year.”

“So you think someone summoned it?”

“I wouldn’t rule that out, no.”

“But who?” Scamp furrowed their brow, and tilted their head to the side- a gesture that, for all its subtlety, upset Jeff, who had been napping on their head. “Who would have that kind of power?”

“A powerful mage, perhaps,” Celestia suggested. “Someone who doesn’t want us following them.”

“The _Hind_ doesn’t know we’re giving chase,” Tris said, “and if she did, I don’t think there’d be a mage onboard who could call storms like this one.”

Every book about magic that Tris had read confirmed this, that calling a storm was a major working, perhaps closer to one of the saints’ miracles than to actual magic. Even her mother had always made a point that not even her great-grandmother, a powerful weather-witch if there had ever been one, could create a storm where there was none- she could call lightning from blue skies, perhaps, but she couldn’t spin a storm from clouds if there weren’t any to begin with. It simply wasn’t possible, for storms to simply be pulled out of thin air, not unless there were other powers involved.

“Could it be an illusion?” Celestia asked, fiddling with the strings of a small violin. A small globe of purple light appeared beside her, bobbing gently in the air for a moment before winking out. “If I wanted to cover my tracks, an illusion might come in handy in doing so.”

“Illusions that size are still big magic,” Scamp said. “It would take a pretty powerful mage to do it.”

Tris nodded. “Scamp’s right. An illusion like that would take a powerful caster to create, and it would take a lot of concentration to maintain.” 

“And the caster couldn’t go too far, or it wouldn’t hold.”

“Which means the _Hind_ could be close.” Tris’s stomach twisted into an uncomfortable knot, and she took a breath, doing her best to ignore the lingering ache in her side as she did. “Sweet spirits.”

“Deal with the storm first,” Corzin said, “and then the ship.”

“If it’s an illusion, I’ll be able to tell once we’re closer, and if it’s a storm, I can drive the winds, and Captain Vanderzee will help.”

Driving the storm would be easy- she’d been doing it since she took over for her mother on the Wisp- but something still wasn’t sitting right with her about the  storm itself. Once inside, she knew she could take a closer look, and see what she could learn. If it was magic, she wanted to know how and why, and if there was any chance she could spin a storm like it. 

There was a clatter of boots as Marora descended into the crew’s quarters, drenched head to toe. “Captain wants all hands on deck,” she said, wringing out the hem of her shirt. “Especially you Bird-Eyes, and Scamp too. Lavan says you’ll need all the help you can get with this one.”


	13. Chapter 13

“Raise the storm sails!”

Avys’s instruction could barely be heard over the howling wind of the storm, but the series of shrill notes that followed from Marora’s whistle conveyed the order to those who didn’t hear Avys. Loose items had already been stowed below, and G and Harmony had gone to secure the carronades and make sure the powder stores were kept dry. Rain fell in heavy, relentless sheets, pooling on the main deck despite Caitlin’s best efforts to keep things clear, and soaking the entire crew to the bone. 

Once Tris was up on the main deck, she set to work on the storm. She couldn’t do anything until the storm sails were raised, so she made her way to the bow, one hand on the gunwale to keep herself steady as the _Rose Dawn_ rocked with each wave that hit it. With her free hand, she reached for the tempest-stone around her neck, and began to draw her magic through the focus of the stone, shaping it into a spear of wind and magic, which she cast towards the storm.

Drawing a breath, she followed the spear into the clouds, combing through the sky, hoping to find the edge of the storm. 

She flitted through a sheet of rain and past an arc of lightning, magic singing in her veins as she mingled with the storm. There was a strange exhilaration to storm-combing, similar to how it felt when Tris shared senses with Shriek, as she let the wind carry her, if only for a moment, before turning her mind back to her work.

Spreading her awareness outwards, Tris searched for the edge of the storm, which would be her best option if the _Rose_ wanted to make it out in fighting shape. It was usually easy enough to find the storm’s edge- all Tris had to feel for was a thinning of the clouds, a place where winds would be calm- but as she picked her way through the clouds, she couldn’t find an end for what felt like miles.

There was something else that caught her attention, something in the movement of the air around her that was different from storms she’d encountered before. It wasn’t unusual for storms to shift with the winds they carried, but as Tris drove her magic deeper, she felt the clouds coiling in on themselves as she neared the storm’s heart, as if the storm itself were a giant serpent. Lightning crackled through the air in thick, searing bands around her spear, and thunder was quick to follow, echoing in her bones.

“Bird-Eyes, we need you driving winds!”

Riri’s voice and a rough shake of her shoulder brought her back to the deck of the _Rose_ , breaking her connection to the storm before she could dive deeper.

“How far to the storm’s edge?” Riri asked, her gaze darting to the main deck for a moment before returning to Tris. “Lavan wants to know if we can skirt the worst of it.”

Releasing the tempest-stone so she could use both hands to grip the gunwales, Tris shook her head. “The edge is too far.”

It was easier than saying she didn’t know, to say it was too far for her to even feel. She would see to it that the _Rose_ made it through this storm, same as she’d done before. 

Riri narrowed her eyes. “Alright then. You know what you’re doing. Still, I need you to drive the wind, and slow it down, if you can.”

“Make sure the backstays are doubled, and I’ll see what can be done.”

“Already done.”

Tris nodded and began to make her way to the quarterdeck, gripping the rail as tight as she could with both hands to avoid losing her balance as the ship moved over a swell. A wave struck the side, spraying her with seawater, which stung her eyes and- if such a thing were possible- drenched her further. She redoubled her grip on the rail and kept moving. 

Driving the wind was easy, simply a matter of grabbing hold of the wind and guiding it where she wanted it to go. It helped that wind was easy- it was easy and it was safe. It could balk and twist like a fish on a line, but it wouldn’t lash out and hurt anyone the way lightning threatened to do. All Tris had to do was reach out with a small shred of her power and show the wind where it needed to go so the _Rose_ could make it through the storm. 

The storm winds writhed in her grip, trying to shake her off, but Tris pushed back, driving it until the wind followed her direction. As rebellious as these winds were, there was familiarity in the task, enough that she could ignore being soaked to the bone and the continued lash of the rain, and turn her focus to holding the winds steady. Slowing the winds would be a challenge, but nothing she couldn’t handle. 

The ship lurched to the side as a wave struck her, and Tris felt her concentration falter and her hold on the wind slip as she tried to keep her balance. 

 _It’s not lightning, so be thankful for that_ , she reminded herself as she took a breath and reached out with her magic once more, trying to slow the wind.

She formed a cord from her magic and used it to belay the wind, holding tight and willing the winds to slow down. There was no point in stopping it- stopping something this strong was more likely to kill her than do any good- but she would settle for sinking her magic into it and slowing it enough to make things easier for Avys and the rest of the crew. 

Thunder rumbled overhead, and out of the corner of her eyes, Tris caught the flash of lightning as it struck the water off the _Rose’s_ port side. 

Lavan was at the helm, seemingly unbothered by the torrential downpour or the winds as she kept the _Rose Dawn_ on course. 

“Don’t get antsy now, Alnes,” Tris heard the captain call as there was another flash of lightning, this one off the starboard bow. 

"I won't,” Tris said, grimacing as the wind tried to twist free of her control, thrashing about like a fish on a line. 

“Good. You can let up a bit, give us some speed.”

With a small nod, she slackened her grip on the winds, directing the newly-freed gusts to fill the storm sails of the _Rose_. She glanced skywards, hoping for a glance of whatever she’d felt when she’d cast her magic into the storm before, but all she could see were churning grey clouds over a storm-blue sea. 

There was another flash of lightning- off starboard proper now-, and Tris felt magic prickle down her spine as the bolt struck the sea. 

A rumble of thunder, and she felt searing heat flash along her collarbones, passing under the tempest-stone, which gave off its own finger of lightning. 

 _Steady_ , she thought, taking another breath and willing her magic to settle.

The last thing she needed was to lose control of her own magic while she was trying to manage a storm. She was good at this- she had to be- so there was surely no need for her magic to kick in unless she explicitly called for it to do so, and she wasn’t about to do that during a storm. Accidental bursts of wind she could handle, but lightning would only cause more trouble than she needed, as it always did. 

“Drop the winds!”

Tris hesitated, glancing to Lavan for confirmation, and at the captain’s nod of assent, released her hold on the wind. She gripped the rail of the quarterdeck, closing her eyes as she felt along the thread binding her to Shriek, calling her familiar to her side. 

“Alnes, can you use that bird of yours to see what in the ocean’s name is up there?”  Lavan’s voice echoed in Tris’s ear, as clear as if the captain were speaking directly beside her.

Tris furrowed her brow, but grasped the tendril of magic between them and  replied, “Do you feel it too?”

She saw Lavan shake her head. “Not like you, but there’s something about this that rubs me wrong, yes,” the captain said. “There’s no way of skirting this?”

“The edge is too far away to make a difference.”

“Very well.” A pause. “Get up in the rigging so you can get good reach, and bring someone with you. I don’t want you falling again.”

“Yes Captain.” 

Tris had scarcely left the quarterdeck when she heard Lavan’s voice in her ear again, saying, “Take your halfling friend, Mr. Horhace.”

She didn’t reply, instead making her way towards the mainmast with Shriek on her shoulder. She tried to ignore the knot coiling in her stomach at the prospect of going up in the rigging, and focus on what Lavan had asked her to do.

The captain wanted Tris to see if she could figure out what was wrong with the storm, which was hardly any different from being  asked to scout a ship or cove- so why was she so scared?

 _You know perfectly well why,_  she thought as she waited for Avys to find someone to fill in for Corzin so he could keep an eye on her while she climbed. She ran her thumb over the ridge of her hagstone before testing the first few feet of ratline.

“You might want to lose that skirt of yours, Bird-Eyes,” Tris heard Marora call from below, and she felt her cheeks flush.

Marora had a point, and- regardless of certain things- she meant well. Usually, Tris could manage easily enough in a skirt, but that was when it was dry. At the moment, it was heavy with rain and seawater, and it caught around her legs as she climbed, which even she was able to acknowledge as a hazard. There was a pair of trousers in her bag belowdecks, but it was a bit late for that now, and there was no use in getting two pieces of clothing wet in one evening. 

With a sigh, she climbed back down and took off her skirt, so she stood only in her underthings and stockings. Doing her best to hide the fact she was blushing from the rest of the crew, Tris folded her skirt and passed it off to Marora, whose ear-to-ear grin only made Tris blush further.

“No use being prickly ‘bout it. It’s not like drawers and stockings are anything we haven’t seen before.” Marora planted a quick kiss on Tris’s cheek. “Now get up there.”

“If anyone-”

“Says anything you’ll magic their tea to taste like piss, I know.”

Tris instructed Shriek to fly to the top of the mast and wait there, feeding some of her own magic along the thread to help the familiar combat the strong winds. Once Shriek was in place, Tris began to climb the ratlines, glancing over her shoulder a few times to check that Corzin was behind her. 

The rain bit at her skin, icy teeth sinking into the wool of her stockings made worse by the wind that howled around her. The same wind shook the ratlines, but she tightened her grip, ignoring the bite of rope on hands too soft to be a proper sailor’s and turning her attention to the storm. 

With a careful breath, Tris merged her vision with Shriek’s and took off into the storm, wings beating furiously against the wind. She fed magic through their connection, determined to stretch the tether as far as it would go in order to get the full scope of the storm.

She dove through the heavy grey clouds, towards the heart of the storm, where lightning lept between clouds that were coiled in one each other like the body of a gigantic serpent. 

 _This isn’t right,_ she thought, grimacing as she felt the tether pull tight, and the dull ache in the back of her head began.

Shoving the ache aside, Tris-as-Shriek flew over the ridge of one of the clouds, studying the bands of lightning that flashed from time throughout the clouds. The way the clouds held shape and how the lightning flashed along the length of the coils wasn’t anything Tris had seen before, or even read about, and she worried for a moment about what it meant.

 _Wonder later_.

Lightning erupted in front of her, and she felt a jagged tendril strike her- familiar and friendly at first, then searing with pain as it set in- as she failed to pull Shriek out of the way in time. 

Tris felt the tether snap, and she found herself  in darkness as the connection was lost. 


	14. Chapter 14

The darkness closed around her as Tris felt her connection to Shriek break, and for a moment, things were too close, too dark. Then she felt herself rushing through darkness along the rapidly deteriorating tether to her body, clinging to the rigging of the _Rose Dawn_.

She felt the memory of lightning as it’d struck her familiar and shattered the fragile spell with so little as a touch, and for a moment she was still, letting it dissipate. The feeling ran down her shoulders to her fingertips, where it stopped. She blinked, adjusting her grip on the ropes as they swung in the wind.

“How are you doing, Tris?” 

Tris didn’t look over her shoulder, eyes still on the clouds ahead. “Shriek’s gone,” she said, pulling herself higher up the ratline with hardly a glance back at Corzin. “I’m going to look again.” 

She didn’t wait for an answer as she took a breath to steady herself and chase the dull ache from the back of her skull, calling upon her wind-spear as she did. As before, Tris drew her power through the tempest-stone, and pitched it forward, into the clouds ahead.

She slid along the canvas of the storm-sail, catching sight of herself and Corzin before she disappeared into the clouds above. Here she knew she couldn’t afford to delay, not if she wanted to find what lay within, so she didn’t reach out to comb the lower clouds, turning her mind ahead to the storm’s heart instead.

As she darted through the cloud-cover, weaving between bands of lightning more easily than she’d done as Shriek, she let her awareness stretch out, and comb through the new reaches of the storm. There was the familiar touch of the storm and the taste of lightning, both of which made her blood sing as she brushed magic against it, but as she dove deeper into the storm, there was something else.

_Come on._

Tris stretched her magic further, working her way towards the center of the storm. Around her, lightning flashed, and this time she felt the thunder echo into her bones as it let out a low, contented rumble. The wind picked up around her, but she pressed forward, finding a gust to carry her where she needed to go.

As she rode the back of the wind, Tris felt something pull at her, and at her magic, drawing her close. It was a feeling she knew, like when she stood on the deck before a storm broke, the prickling of anticipation in her blood, magic calling to magic, but this time it was louder. The call rippled through her body and drew her close, pulling her into its heart.

Carefully, Tris reached out and plucked a wisp of cloud, wrapping it around her like a scarf of fine gauze- she remembered her mother wearing one such scarf once, not made of clouds, but of real cloth- and letting it settle against her magic. She held the cloud-stuff to her as she dove deeper into the storm, where the clouds folded in on themselves like the coils of a serpent, banded with lightning.

She extended her magic to touch it, feeling for the differences in the air around her with the point of her wind-spear. 

An arc of lighting snapped loose of its coil, and Tris felt her magic balk as it lashed out, missing her by a hair. Sizzling heat raced past her, replacing the airy salt-smell of the storm with one of burnt air, and her nose wrinkled. 

 _Don’t go getting scared now_ , she told herself, wrapping the protective cloud tighter around her wind-spear before diving closer. Lightning flashed again in the corner of her vision, and then directly in front of her, causing her to start. 

As she tightened her hold on the wind-spear and cleared the light-spots from her vision, Tris thought she saw the face of a serpent with a magnificent feathered crest formed from clouds. Lightning danced along the cloud-feathers, searing the air around it, and its eyes shone with the same burning intensity as ball-lightning- something Tris had encountered before, but never of this size. 

The storm-creature turned its head, and there was a ripple of thunder that rattled Tris to her core as the clouds that formed its body pressed together. It opened its mouth, and an eruption of lightning followed, catching Tris’s wind-spear in the spray. 

“Sweet spirits.”

The return to her body wasn’t as abrupt as it had been when she lost Shriek, but this time Tris felt the sting of lightning along her arms and shoulders, beneath the chill of the rain. The ache in the back of her head was louder, and she knew she was close to stretching her magic too far if she wasn’t careful. She wouldn’t be able to call her wind-spear back, she knew that much, but she hoped that if it came to staving off the storm-creature, she would have enough power left to at least do that. 

She glanced behind her, where Lavan was still standing at the helm, and used her magic to release a series of colored sparks into the air once she was sure she had the captain’s attention. It was a long established signal between them, and when Tris saw the captain nod, she raised her voice to the wind. 

“Hold the course,” she called, daring the storm to drown out her voice as she issued the order. She pulled at a scrap of magic and used it to drive the wind into the sails, praying to whatever saint was listening, that the _Rose_ would live up to Lavan’s boast of being the fastest Suulian privateer- _Pirate_ , Tris corrected- ship and make it through the storm. 

She didn’t see it, too focused ahead of her, but Tris felt lightning strike off the port side, searing the air. She felt the tremor in the air, and how her magic jerked towards it. 

“No you don’t,” she muttered, hooking an arm into the rigging and reaching out with the other to show her power which direction it needed to follow. She couldn’t have it twist away now, not when there were people on deck, and not with Corzin as close as he was.

Overhead, there was the echo of thunder, and ship pitched over a swell in the ocean, throwing Tris against the rigging.

Rope bit into the unprotected crook of her elbow- her undersleeves, heavy with rainwater, had slid from where they were usually safely tucked under her sleeve- and she bit her lip as her hold on the wind broke.

 _Mother_ , she thought, glancing to the sky, searching the clouds for any sign of the storm-serpent that had broken her spear. _What do I do?_

Lightning struck again, closer to the _Rose_ than the last bolt, and magic flared up Tris’s arm, and she saw the wink of light as it traced her veins before disappearing under her shirt. 

“Hey Bird-Eyes, get down from there!” The wind carried Marora’s voice to where Tris was perched, though what followed was drowned out as a howling gale swept the ship.

Tris shook her head.

If anything, she needed to climb higher, so she could be of better help fighting the storm.

“Tris, get down now!” 

“I know what I’m doing,” she called back, wishing she had a way to make her voice carry more than it did. With one last glance at Corzin, she clambered up the remaining few feet of ratline and gathered her magic in on itself. 

It was reveling in the storm- much more than it normally did- flaring and sparking in the corner of her eye as she tried to wrestle it into shape. If she had a guess, it would be that the storm-serprent was exciting her magic by its sheer proximity. It would explain why each lightning strike caused her magic to sing louder than usual, and why she felt each rumble of thunder more deeply than she was accustomed. 

A crooked finger of lightning reached for the ship- the first to strike the highest point, as lightning was supposed to do.

She drove her magic into the lightning as it touched the mast, gripping it with both hands and wresting it from its course. 

Even with her magic protecting her, Tris could still feel the searing heat of the lightning as it twisted in her hold 

 _Lightning arcs towards the deck of the_ Blue Wisp _, and she reaches to catch it, remembering her mother’s books and what they say about catching lightning._

_It’s a tricky thing, lightning. As she grips it with both hands, it twists and writhes, crackling as it pulls towards the ground. It wants to complete its journey, and she’s stopped it, binding it with magic and looking for a way to direct it away from her father’s ship._

“Bird-Eyes, get down now!”

Tris barely heard Marora’s call as she searched for a place to redirect the lightning, and she ignored the command of the bosun’s whistle as well. 

She couldn’t afford  distractions when she was holding something as temperamental as lightning, and even though it would only be for a matter of moments, there was too much to go wrong. She could take a hit from lightning, but Corzin couldn’t, and neither could anyone on the _Rose’s_ deck.

_The lightning bites into her skin as she tightens her grip around it, burning through her magic faster than she can feed it- it wants to be free._

“Don’t just stand there,” she muttered, drawing a small reserve of magic through the tempest-stone and using it to force the lightning still. She needed to be careful, or she risked repeating a mistake that could not afford repetition. 

Even with magic binding it, the lightning thrashed in her hands, twisting desperately to and fro like a large fish or serpent. Overhead, a flash of free lightning hit the water, and  thunder followed.

_Her father shouts an order, and the ship pitches over a swell. Her breath hitches in her throat, and the lightning escapes her grip as her focus breaks._

A flash of light, a final blaze of heat, and her hands were empty. There were cries below as the lightning, now free and trailing her magic like the ribbon tail of a kite, flew towards the main deck, then nothing, just the sound of the storm, before Marora shouted an order. 

Tris clung to the ratlines, the fiery bite of  lightning snaking up her arms and around her shoulders, hurting enough that she didn’t dare move. At first, it didn’t hurt, burning along the pathways it’d carved years earlier before it began to create what she knew would be new fractal patterns across  her skin. 

_The halfling man is not untouched by her mistake._

_He will live, but as she  darts for her cabin- her dress soaked all the way through to her petticoats by the rain, the fabric made too heavy to properly run in without picking up her skirts- she sees the fractal scar that spreads along his chest to his right wrist, where the stray lightning struck him._

_Her father calls her name, but she does not hear, does not think to look as she retreats and makes ready to leave the moment they make port in Peder’s March._

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: flashbacks  
> The following chapter contains two instances of flashbacks, which are very brief sections in all italics.

“What in the name of the three fucking oceans were you thinking?” 

Tris’s head throbbed, and Lavan’s raised voice didn’t help it at all with that fact. The weakness of overspent magic had settled in her bones over the last quarter-hour, heavy and aching, while the remnants of lightning burned along her skin. Her clothes were still soaked and dripping on the floor of the captain’s small stateroom, the tap tap-tap of rainwater barely loud enough to break the tense silence that hung between the two women. 

“I know what I was doing.”

“Don’t start that with me,” the captain said, eye narrowed at Tris. There was a ripple across her features, a flash of white skin, and then the change was gone. “You got in over your head, and you put every member of my crew and my ship at risk.”

“You gave me command.”

“And I regret doing it.”

Tris took a breath to steady herself, to calm the small sparks that lept from her skin. She kept her attention on Lavan, only partially aware of Celestia’s presence behind her, and Marora and Riri’s to the side of Lavan. None of the assembled crew members said a word, but watched on silently, waiting for the captain’s orders, if any were to come.

“There was no safe way through but forward.” She lifted her chin, determined not to let Lavan see her cower. “I wouldn’t use the signal unless it was an emergency.”

“It was a heavy storm, Alnes. If you’d found the edge, as you claim you’re able to, we could have skirted it easily.”

“This time of year, and inside the mouth of the Viridian Bay?” Tris shook her head, and a burst of pain behind her eyes that caused her to wince followed. “You know that’s not natural.”

“We cannot afford delays”- Lavan fixed Tris with a look the young woman recognized all too well- “you should know that.” 

“You’re being a bit unfair, don’t you think?” Celestia stepped into Tris’s peripheral vision, arms crossed in front of her. “Tris wouldn’t ask for command unless-”

“Quiet.” Another ripple passed across Lavan’s form, and as she curled her lip in a snarl, Tris caught sight of pointed teeth. “ _Tristana_ can defend herself, should she chose to do so.” 

Tris felt her stomach curl at the use of her full name, but did her best to swallow the rising nausea. It was not a time for weakness, as much as she wanted to concede to Lavan and accept whatever punishment the captain had for her- a punishment she no doubt deserved.

“There was magic in the storm,” she said after a moment’s silence. 

“And so you drove us deeper into it?”

  
“There wasn’t a way around- it was too big for there to be any point.”

“You can say you were curious about it, just so everyone here is clear that you endangered the lives of my crew and your friends, all so you could satisfy your saints-damned curiosity.”

“I wasn’t-” Tris gave her head a small shake. She felt sparks lick the side of her face as they lept from wisps of hair that’d come loose in the wind, quick and burning streaks of light across her vision. “I needed to know as much as I could, the same as I would any storm.”

“And you spent yourself in the process, it would seem.”  Lavan clicked her tongue, and shook her head. “You’re reckless and stupid, and there’s no place for that on board my ship, you know that. I’ve half a mind to let the ocean decide your fate.”

Her stomach dropped, and a lump found its way to the top of Tris’s throat. At her side, she fidgeted with the hagstone, running her thumb over the round ridge of stone, trying to stay calm. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

“What it means”-a pause- “is the hands and feet of the offending party are bound, and they’re thrown overboard to fend for themselves. If they survive, it’s considered time served. If not, well...”

“That’s fucking barbaric,” Celestia said, crinkling her nose, “and I’m a Drow.”

“Well this isn’t your ship, Miss Stardust.” There was dangerously long pause before a sly smile curled at the corner of Lavan’s lip. “But humor me, if you will, and do tell me what you would suggest in place of letting the ocean judge Tristana here- I’m curious.”

_She knows they talk about her after the incident with Mr. Stilts, and what she doesn’t hear  herself, Amery tells her when the two have time alone._

_They speak of how she is too young, her magic too out of control, but they’ve always said it; she sees the same in her father’s eyes when she drives a storm, alongside sadness (sadness for her mother, not for her age). There is talk of what’s to be done with her, if she’s to be treated the same, or if her father’s name protects her from what she’s done._

“Well, it depends on what exactly she did.” 

“Endangerment of the crew and ship, and deliberate harm of a fellow sailor,” Riri said, her gaze flicking to Lavan before resting on Tris with uncomfortable weight. 

“Who?”  Tris managed to ask, her voice catching in her throat as she spoke.

Lavan looked to Marora, who nodded and took a small step foward. 

“The pink tiefling child,” the Rose Dawn’s bosun said. “A piece of the lightning you caught struck them.”

“Oh Regent.” 

Any previous attempt at confidence melted away as a weight settled in Tris’s chest, making it difficult to breathe. There was movement out of the corner of her eyes as Celestia approached, and Tris ducked her head to avoid having to make eye contact with the Drow woman. 

“So, Miss Stardust-”

“Celestia.”

“What do you think should be done to make sure Tris answers for her recklessness?”

Tris could feel Celestia’s gaze rest on her, but still, she didn’t meet Celestia’s gaze. Instead, she fixed her attention on Lavan, whose uncovered eye flashed with a wicked glint as another ripple passed across her skin, revealing the strange stark-white skin from earlier. 

_She stands outside her father’s stateroom, hands clasped in front of her, trying not to fidget with the cuffs of her sleeves. On the other side of the door, she hears voices- Ms. Appleblossom, the bosun, Mr. Burns, the quartermaster, and, of course, her father- and while she cannot pick out exact words, she knows well enough what (and who) they are discussing. She hears her name several times throughout, and she manages to catch a few sentences from time to time._

_“Your daughter is a danger to every man on board this ship, Roland.”_

_“I’ll speak with her about-”_

_“Ignoring a hole in your boot doesn’t make it any smaller,” she hears Ms. Appleblossom say, followed by something in muttered Halfling- Tris picks out the word “children,” but not much else. “Who’s to say it won’t happen again?”_

_“She needs to be sent to a university. It doesn’t matter how accomplished she is on her own, she’s a danger without the proper schooling.”_

_Her father says something she can’t hear the words of, only the seriousness in his tone, and the sound of floorboards creaking beneath boots. Mr. Burns says something that sounds like he is cautioning Roland, and Ms. Appleblossom replies with a sneer in her voice._

“What about dunking?” Celestia said, her voice closer to Tris than she remembered the other woman being before. “That’s something your lot do, isn’t it?”

Once more, Lavan’s lips curled into a grin that reminded Tris all too well of a fox in a chicken coop. “That can definitely be arranged, and will do quite nicely, I think,” she said, giving Celestia a small nod. “Thank you, Celestia. Marora, go assemble the crew on the main deck. Riri, if you would be so kind, find the rope and get Bird-Eyes situated for us, please.”

  


 

  
  



	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Drowning, description of submersion in water

Tris wasn’t unfamiliar with dunking. 

She’d seen it on the _Blue Wisp_ , when they rounded the Caernon peninsula. It was a long time ago- before her mother died- and the memory was far away. She remembered the noise of it all, the cheers of the sailors as they escorted the recipient of the ceremony to the rail, stamping feet and the roaring chorus of a bawdy Wendish song that she knew in any other case would be cut off quickly by her father. It was a joyous occasion on the _Wisp_ , a celebration of a sailor’s first journey around Jova, or a coming-of-age ceremony for young sailors. 

It wasn’t ever something she’d taken part in, of course. Even when she assumed her duty as ship’s mage, Tris hadn’t been given the same ceremony. It would have been undignified, for the  captain’s daughter to participate in a tradition meant for common sailors, and even if she had gotten past the impropriety of it, her father would have never permitted it. 

Dunking was something familiar from her time on board the _Rose Dawn_ as well, but under Lavan’s captaincy, it was hardly the ceremony Tris had grown up around. 

She remembered it happening a few times, like when Drax was caught stealing from a prize and Riri decided to teach him his lesson with a quick dunking. Or when Reah'd refused to follow orders during a raid.

There was no cheering, no bawdy songs as Tris was escorted to the port rail. A quiet murmur passed through the assembled crew as they parted to let her and Riri through to where Marora (no doubt with the help of Tasla and Caitlin) had already assembled the rig that Lavan kept expressly for this purpose. 

Tris didn’t meet the eyes of any crew members as she made her way to the rail. A quick glance to the side was enough to coil guilt in the pit of her stomach as she caught sight of familiar faces- Corzin and Celestia among them, and she swore she saw a flash of bright pink between them, but shook her head and dismissed the thought- and she quickly returned her gaze to the ocean beyond the rail. 

She didn’t listen as Riri declared her offenses to the crew- she knew what they were: the harming of another crew member and direct endangerment of the crew and ship- and didn’t protest as Marora attached the hook of the dunking rig to the makeshift harness that Riri had helped Tris into earlier. 

“Take a deep breath, Bird-eyes,” the half-elf whispered before giving Tris a quick boost onto the rail. 

As tired as she was, Tris knew Marora was joking, playing with her to ease the tension of the moment.

Dunking- even when used as punishment- wasn’t ever a prolonged affair. At most, she’d be underwater for two minutes, which she could handle. It was meant to get a point across and discourage further infraction, dunking, not bring the offender inches from death.

_Breathe._

She waited for the push that would inevitably come- from Marora or Riri- to send her over the rail, but nothing came.

A sea-breeze brushed past, tangling around her knees and winding through the hair that’d fallen in her face. There was a small twinge in her fingers as the breeze touched her, but it quickly vanished.

Her stomach rolled, and she shifted lightly on the balls of her feet to try and dispel the sensation.  

_Get it over with already._

Another murmur passed through the crew of the _Rose Dawn_ , cut short by the sound of footsteps on the deck. The sound of Lavan’s footsteps drew near, then stopped at the rail. 

_Please._

“Turn around, Alnes.”

Tris furrowed her brow. “Pardon?”

“You heard me, girl. Turn around.” 

Rather than risk further wrath, Tris did ask she was asked, her step faltering only slightly as she did so. She didn’t meet Lavan’s gaze, nor did she let her attention on the crew. She could already feel their attention on her- she didn't need to look to see that.

“Look at me.” 

Tris caught a cold glint in Lavan’s eye as she turned to face the captain. “Please, just get it over with,” she said, keeping her voice low. 

“Speak up.”

She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t say anything.”

Lavan arched a brow. “Very well.” 

Tris watched as Lavan took another few step forward, such that, had Tris been standing on the deck, the two women would have been toe-to-toe. She blinked, and Lavan’s form seemed to shift, and the captain grew a few feet so that they were standing at the same height, looking eye to eye. 

“I hope you can hold your breath.”

Before Tris could make sense of Lavan’s words, she found herself falling backwards off the rail of the ship, towards the surface of the water. 

Cold water wrapped around her, soaking every fiber of her clothing and pulling her beneath the surface. She fell in the dark, aware only of water moving around her, the undersides of swells batting her to-and-fro, and the cold as they did. There was a faint awareness of the rope that kept her tied to the _Rose Dawn_ , now pulled taut behind her, and she found herself counting the minutes as they passed. 

_One._

Tris stirred the water around her in small, gentle circles, if only to keep the circulation in her hands, and to keep from drifting. The headache from her encounter  with the storm-creature had faded, but the heaviness remained in her bones, alleviated only slightly by the passage of time and cold water, and she doubted she would be capable of  any greater motion. 

_Two._

She didn’t feel the cold by the second minute, except when the water shifted significantly alongside her, though she knew it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Any moment now, she would be hauled out the water and onto the ship’s deck, her sentence served- she just had to be patient.

_Three._

She wondered what was taking them so long- she should have been pulled up by now. There was no way she’d been forgotten, as Lavan seemed intent on making it a public affair, and there were crew members who wouldn’t let her stay under any longer than was absolutely necessary. Dunking wasn’t meant to be prolonged- two minutes made the point, and Tris knew that was how long every other dunking she’d witnessed on the Rose had been, so why should hers be any different? 

_Four._

Nothing. 

_Five_

Her lungs were beginning to protest, straining for air, and the dark and cold seemed to close around her. She felt the brief flash of magic down her arms, but it died before she could do anything with it. There was no magic she could call upon, and  even if she’d had the strength to do so, what could she do? 

Her lungs burned for want of air, and she could hear the roar of blood in her ears, and just as she thought they might burst, Tris felt herself being hoisted up through the water, towards the surface.

The moment her head broke the surface, Tris released the breath she’d been holding and took as deep a breath as she could mange, trying to ease the soreness in her chest. The cold followed her, having sunk into her shirt and undergarments while she was underwater only to be driven deeper by the winds that raced across the water’s surface. 

Marora took Tris by the hand and helped her onto the rail, and from there, onto the deck of the Rose Dawn. Tris was only a little aware of the half-elf woman helping her out of the harness before stepping away. 

“I hope you learned your lesson.”

Tris didn’t face Lavan- she knew well enough that the captain would be grinning like a fox, pleased with herself at Tris’s state. 

Instead she kept her gaze lowered as she gathered herself, making sure she was steady enough to move without help. Her thoughts were a fog of panic and weariness, and she could hear others speaking- whether to address her directly, or speaking of her- but she didn’t register what exactly they were saying as she made her way to her bunk. 

She needed to be away, or as away as she could be, from others, if only for a few hours. They all knew that she’d hurt Scamp and endangered the rest of the crew, and Lavan had been right, it’d been her own curiosity that had drawn her into the clouds, where she didn’t think to consider the safety of a crew it was her job to protect. 

She took a long drink of whiskey, if only for the temporary warmth  that settled in her stomach, before curling up in her bunk. The permeating cold, as well as the absence of Shriek, made falling asleep difficult, and she shifted restlessly in her bunk for longer than she cared to count before the heaviness in her bones and weariness in the rest of her body carried her off to sleep. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler Warning: This chapter contains mention of events from Episodes 36-37, and Episodes 48-51

That night, Tris dreamt of a storm, of sheets of rain lashing against the deck of an unfamiliar ship and howling wind that buffeted the sails. The sky overhead was heavy grey, and the ocean that tossed below was much the same, with crests of white from waves as they broke. In the distance, a bolt of lightning broke through the gloom, and a peal of thunder was soon to follow, shaking the ground beneath her feet. 

In the dream, Tris found her mother perched in the bow- not an unusual perch for her in such weather-, her back to Tris as she traced a pattern in the air before her. She was as Tris remembered her last, red hair held away from the wind in a snood, standing unbothered with her face to the wind as the storm turned around her and she traced a pattern in the rain before her. The glyphs flashed before Lydia, written in lightning before they vanished into a burst of wind and rain around her. 

And the dream shifted.

This ship was familiar- the  _ Blue Wisp _ \- and the storm had died down. The skies overhead were still heavy and grey,the waves still. Rain fell in a fine mist around her, but there was no wind to stir the sails, no rolls of thunder to shake the sky. The boards of the deck were soaked with seawater and blood, and when Tris looked, she saw the bodies that littered the main deck of her father’s ship. 

At first, they were faces she didn’t recognize, or at least couldn’t put names to, but as she made her way from stern to bow, she found names to put to faces. Her step faltered as she came across the body of a dark-haired halfling with a neat beard and polished boots, sporting a stretch of fractal scars under the collar of his shirt, which she easily recognized as Tedison Stilts. Nearby lay Amery and Marora, with similar patterns burned into their skin, and then the cabin boy from the  _ Hirondelle _ who had been so fascinated with how Tris could make Shriek appear and disappear with a flick of her fingers. There were others- it felt like the deck was full of bodies, all sporting the familiar fractal pattern of scars that Tris recognized as coming from lightning- and she could put names to all of them. She spotted the distinctly pink form of Scamp, the lightning’s mark splayed across their cheek, and her heart lurched, driving her towards the bow with renewed fervor.

As Tris neared the bow, she stumbled over something she prayed was a bundle of rope or canvas, but when she looked down, she found the body of a red-haired half-elf woman, a tempest-stone hanging on a familiar silver chain around her neck- her mother. 

Like the other bodies, Lydia lay with the stillness of the grave, but there was no sign that lightning had touched her. Instead, the front of her shirt was stained with blood from a fatal blow dealt by an enemy sword, her lips parted as if partway through saying something- casting a spell, or calling out… 

“Tris. Tris!” 

She was woken by the sound of her name and by someone shaking her by the shoulder. “What?” In the dim light of the cabin, she couldn’t see the face of whoever had woken her, but, as she shook off the weariness of sleep (the bone-weariness of earlier was quieter now, a dull ache that she could manage), she was able to put a name to the voice. “Scamp, I’m sorry, I-”

“You were having a nightmare,” the tiefling said with a soft, matter-of-fact tone with a tinge of ...was that concern? No, Tris must have misheard. “Are you okay?” 

_ Far from it _ , Tris thought, but didn’t say. “I need some air, that’s all,” she said, giving her head a small shake, more to avoid making eye contact with Scamp through the dark than anything else. “You should get some sleep.”

There was silence for a moment while Tris retrieved her wrap from the nail beside her hammock and deliberated whether or not it was worth the trouble of putting on her stockings and boots, or if she could just walk the deck in her bare feet without drawing attention to herself. She could hear her heart racing in her chest and the harshness of each breath over the quiet creak and rock of the  _ Rose Dawn _ around her, but she didn’t bother to break the silence. Elsewhere in the cabin- not far, if memory served- there was the quiet snoring from the others, and someone was muttering about a woman named Molly.

“Are you sure you’re okay? It seemed like a very bad dream”

Tris looked up from the neat pile that were her stockings beside her boots, at the dark outline she presumed to be Scamp. “I’ll be alright after some fresh air- really.” 

“I don’t believe you.” 

She let out a long sigh. “If what you want is to come with me, then by all means.”

“I just don’t think you should be alone.” A pause. “And Corzin’s snoring is  _ extra _ loud tonight. I don’t know how Jeffry’s sleeping through it.” 

Tris ducked her head to hide the nervous laugh that escaped her lips before smoothing her skirt and fastening her wrap around her shoulders. “Very well,” she said, gesturing for Scamp to follow as she made her way to the main deck of the  _ Rose. _

The night air was cool and crisp, with the faintest taste of rain on the steady breeze that filled the sails. Overhead, thin wisps of cloud dotted the sky, not enough to hide the stars, which glittered against the dark night sky. 

Tris found a spot at rail and closed her eyes, letting her attention turn to the lull of waves around them. She took a breath, and then another, matching it to the rock of the waves as if she was preparing to perform a big spell. After another stretch of silence, she glanced at Scamp, glad for the light of the deck lanterns and the stars, which revealed the small furrow in the young tiefling’s brow.

“Captain Vanderzee said you were hurt during the storm,” Tris said, “I’m sorry. I overestimated what I could do, and you got hurt because I was stupid and didn’t think. I didn’t mean for it-for you-”

“You were trying to help, and you can’t really tell what magic is going to do sometimes- I understand.” They paused. “I cast a fireball without meaning to once, and it hurt Celestia and Corzin pretty badly.” 

“How-? Nevermind.” She turned her attention to the sea, which was now smooth- they must be close to the mouth of the bay by now, and closer to their quarry- and let the wind pull at her salt-stiff curls. She glanced over at Scamp. “Did they forgive you?”

Scamp nodded. “They did, and they told me not to be sad, because I can’t help it. Sometimes my magic gets weird and does weird things.”

“Like make yourself bigger, or call a unicorn,” Tris said with a small smile. “You told me in the tavern when we met, and then there were the butterflies after we...after we took the  _ Wisp. _ I’ve never seen magic like that before.” 

“I don’t think anyone has magic like mine.”

“It is rather unusual, yes.” She furrowed her brow. “I’ve never read about anything like what you’ve described. There was Petreleone, sure, but his magic was more in line with what I can do, not what you do.”

“There haven’t been a lot of people like me, I don’t think- or I’m the only one, I don’t really know”

“Does it make you scared, to be the only one?”

Scamp furrowed their brow, and pressed their lips into a tight, thoughtful line. “Oh yes, but I have Corzin and Celestia,” they said, glancing at Tris. “Are you ever scared?”

A lump rose in Tris’s throat, and she swallowed, taking a moment to let the unease pass. “Sometimes.”

“It’s okay to be scared, you know.” There was a quiet, impish glint in Scamp’s eyes, and they leaned close to Tris to whisper, “Even Corzin gets scared sometimes, and he’s seen a kraken- twice!”

“A kraken? You’re not serious.” 

Scamp shoved their hands in their trouser pockets. “We were in Ceyonne when it hit.”

“I remember hearing when it happened.” She pressed her lips together in a thoughtful line. “What was it like.”

“Well, there were a lot of zombies, and a lot of sahuagin, but we killed the thing that was controlling them, so they went away, and then we killed the zombies, and the wrights too.”

“Just the three of you?”

“Oh no- we had help from the church and an army mage friend of Corzin’s.”

“Sounds like quite the adventure.”

“Oh you have no idea.”

Tris arched a brow. “Oh?”

“We got lost in the forest of Meadmere once- you should ask Celestia about that, she always tells it the best.”

“You’ve had a lot of adventures, for someone your age,” Tris said, managing a small smile. “Ceyonne, the Meadmere forest- I’m almost jealous.” 

“You’ve had some adventures, haven’t you? Harmony said you’ve been sailing your whole life, so you’ve got to have something.”

“Hardly.” 

Quiet fell between them again, filled by the quiet creak of the ship beneath their feet, the flapping of canvas in the wind, and the rush of water below.

Tris traced whorls in the wood, matching her breaths to the gentle rock of the  _ Rose Dawn _ as it sailed along.When she turned her glance once more towards Scamp, the pink tiefling was no longer beside her. 

_ How...? _

She furrowed her brow- if Scamp had moved, she would’ve heard, surely- and glanced about for the young mage. “Scamp?” she called, the furrow in her brow deepening as she searched the main deck.

“Over here!” she heard Scamp call from the forecastle, and sure enough, there they were, grinning broadly in a pool of dim lamp-light, probably (if Tris had to guess) sixty feet from where they’d stood only a moment ago.

It was magic (what else could it be?) but it wasn’t anything Tris’d read about being possible. It was teleportation of some kind- there was no other explanation- and while Tris wasn’t well-versed in what little theory there was around it, she knew enough to know it wasn’t possible. How did Scamp manage it then, if there was no possible way for the magic to work in the first place? Was it to do with the certain...oddities of their magic? Tris didn’t dismiss it as a possibility, nor did she dismiss the possibility that it could be some strange strain of tiefling magic, and maybe that was why it went overlooked. 

“Is that another of your magic’s weird things?” she asked, making her way towards the young mage. 

Scamp nodded. “Yep!”

“You do realize teleportation isn’t a thing that just happens, right?” She narrowed her eyes at Scamp. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“I didn’t learn it, not really,” they said. “Sometimes it happens without me meaning to, and sometimes I can make it happen intentionally.”

“How?”

“Do you want to see?” 

“I am curious.” 

“Okay!” With a wide grin, Scamp took a small step forward, and disappeared in a soft puff of mist, only to reappear a few yards away from where they’d been standing not a moment ago. “Ta-da!” 

“Sweet spirits,” Tris muttered, glancing where Scamp’d stood a moment ago, and where they stood now, eyes wide with disbelief at what she’d just witnessed. “Perhaps that’s enough excitement for now- we’re going to catch the Hind any day now, and we should be well-rested when we do.”

“And then I can show you how to make horses.”

Tris smiled. “Yes,” she said, omitting the fact she was unlikely to have much use for horses at sea. “I look forward to that.” 

“And it won’t be boring. I won’t make you roll bandages or anything like that.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Very well. Between the two of us, you’re the expert in making horses, I suppose, so I will defer to your expertise.” She turned to leave, to return to her bunk, and what she hoped would be a dreamless sleep until she was woken for her shift. 

There was an uneasiness in her stomach as she settled back in her bunk, a knot in her stomach that she couldn’t shake lose. She thought of the image of her mother from her nightmare, slain by the captain of an enemy crew, and promised in her heart that she’d avenge the wrong done, and sink the  _ Black Hind _ , so she couldn’t hurt anyone else the way she’d hurt Lydia and the  _ Blue Wisp.  _ Whether or not she recalled the day, Captain Asselin would come to regret her choice to hunt the Wisp- Tris would see to that.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed what will hopefully be the first of many installments in this fic. I will be posting more canon things for Flintlocks in the future.\  
> If you're reading this with no idea what Flintlocks & Fireballs is, I highly recommend you give it a listen.
> 
> As ever, feel free to leave any comments you might have in the comments box below


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